


Traces

by Dewdroplotus (Sevargs)



Series: Unbroken [3]
Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death, General Triggers, Growing Old Together, In a sense, M/M, Major Illness, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, some sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:08:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 53,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26363944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sevargs/pseuds/Dewdroplotus
Summary: You've finally reached the point where the wounds that became scars are finally just traces in the skin of your souls. All your regrets are settled back for you to learn from and move you forward from here.Sequel to Scars
Relationships: Kanda Yuu/Allen Walker
Series: Unbroken [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/36963
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is, for some reason, significantly longer than the others. I did a basic error check, but for the most part this is going up as is. If you should see a glaring error, I will absolutely fix it, if you tell me where.

The wind is bitingly cold against you and you’re wrapping your jacket tighter. The cold doesn’t bother you too much, but it makes your bones ache and your wrists have tendencies to unexplainably hurt when the cold permeates you. The wind makes it worse, but you know the two of you won’t be out here for much longer. This secluded place, overlooking the ocean, is a silent haven for mourning and you’re here for a moment of remembrance. There’s no grave or anything, but this place is acting as one for you. Even though it happened fifteen years ago, you remember it vividly. 

He was a person who you didn’t realize was important to you. He’d left you with a mountain of debt and a slew of memories that always had you classifying him as some sort of tyrannical monster. But despite these negatives, you realized many years ago that Cross Marian was a twisted sort of father figure for you and he was the first to understand something you didn’t at the time. 

You stand here overlooking the place where you’d originally released his ashes. There’s no special feeling, no magical connection, or any other reason to feel attached to this location. You know better than to think that someone’s spirit is connected to the “place of their burial”. Cross is as elusive in death as he is in life, you know this already. But still, this is the only place you can consider for paying tribute. Kanda, too, understands this concept and he’s followed you up here with no complaints—carrying a small flask of wine with him. 

Years ago, you remember this day playing out differently. You remember being overwhelmed with the sensations of loss and not understanding Cross’s last words to you. For so many years you tried to put a tangible definition to it, but it never came until the year you almost left your partner. That year forced you to really consider that last battle. Cross had put a bullet through your lover in order to save him—missing vital zone—and to exorcise the Noah that nearly robbed you of the person who meant everything to you. In return, he took a fatal blow that has led you both here. 

_ Living life incomplete isn’t living at all.  _

These were the words he left you and now you completely understand. He saw the deep bond between you and your partner, before either of you were even aware of its strength. Your Master had already lived his life and had already lost the things that made him whole. Now you see why he chose this path. Cross was someone who so firmly believed there was a true future for you, that he laid out his own future to guide both of you. 

For a while, you hated him because he left you feeling guilty. You wanted to take back the way that fight went wrong, but you also couldn’t bear to replace Cross’s death with Kanda—you just couldn’t. When your life seemed to be splintering, the thoughts swallowed your ability to think beyond the most basic truths. Cross was dead and Kanda wasn’t. 

Now you see, though. Through Kanda, Cross atoned for his own mistakes. Cross left you the single task of being happy and staying by the side of the one who served as your other half. So you stand next to Kanda; taking his hand in your own to steal a small bit of his warmth and feel him again. The discussion you had with him before you arrived here is what made you finally realize these things and you nod your head when Kanda pours the fine liquor from the flask, letting it be carried away with the wind.

In his age, Kanda’s shown a strange ability to say the wisest things in the most unexpected ways. In a breath, he’d cleansed your guilt by making you understand that Cross’s intent was to live vicariously through those left over—those with the time and freedom to really understand it.

“It’s not much, you old bastard,” Kanda whispers, huddling close to you. He’s not very fond of cold weather these days, but you’re thankful he’s bearing it for this. “But maybe you’ll taste it, wherever you are, burning in hell I’m sure.” 

“He’s probably waiting for us,” you chuckle, washing out the bitter thoughts that had enraptured you in the previous years. 

“Probably racking up a nice debt in your name.” 

You puff your cheek and reach a hand to pinch Kanda’s arm until he’s swatting at you. Kanda has no problems poking at your unbelievable debts now that you’ve finally paid them off. Between the two of you, you’ve managed to clear your name and continue living off the graces of the Black Order—who had thanked all of its participants with a promise of lifetime support. You all earned it; it was the least they could do anyway. With this, you and Kanda live peacefully; travelling from place to place and truly experiencing the world outside of the house that you are finally coming back to. 

For the first time in almost six years, you are back here. You haven’t even entered your house yet—choosing to come straight to this site for the last memorial you’ll devote to Cross, now that you’ve finally come to understand the meanings behind all of the emotional mysteries in your life. Your travels with him have opened your eyes and you can respectfully thank Cross and live your life for the future, instead of the hollow past. 

“This is the last time we’ll be here, Master,” you speak, not bothering to be discreet. Kanda knows you’re here to give your final respects—because he’s here for the same reason. He is the man who was the last person Cross ever fought for. Even if the two of them held no bond, there was something there now, transferred in his unbreakable link with Allen. “Try not to leave too much disaster in your wake.” 

“Let’s go back, beansprout,” Kanda shivers, drawing in close to you. “If we don’t get to warmth soon, I’m going to be joining him soon and I’d like to avoid his ugly mug for a little longer.” 

You chuckle and nestle closer to him so you can both walk close and shield each other from the biting wind. For just a split second, you could swear on your life you can hear Cross’s voice nipping at your ear and you turn your head to see nothing. You weren’t expecting anything, of course, but the illusion felt solid enough to almost stagger your steps. 

“I swear I feel like I just heard him call us dumbasses,” Kanda grunts and turns his face toward yours, eyes flicking back to nothing—just like you did, an instinctual behavior. 

“…Hm. So you heard that too.” 


	2. Chapter 2

“Are you still having trouble with your tie?” You ask him as you watch him in the mirror. His fingers can’t decide how to make the loop and you’ve already been shooed away. You want to help him, because this is a simple procedure for you; but he’s determined to figure it out on his own. It’s a well known fact that Kanda Yuu doesn’t do ties; and yet, here he is, working to make one happen. By a small miracle, you managed to get him to dress nicely, even if it’s made him irritable and ready to rip a strip of fabric into tiny squares. 

“Fuck you, I can do this,” he hisses back, though its sounds about as deflated as it can get. Kanda’s definitely not winning any speed awards for his ability to suit up and you almost want to laugh at him for trying. You don’t, though, because you don’t want him to spite you by giving up and disrobing. “Why do I need to wear a tie anyway? These people have never even seen me dressed up, what do they care if I look presentable?” 

“They’ve seen you dressed up before. We’ve taken photos, remember? You had a tie then too,” you argue and brush your hair back from your face, gathering it at the base of your neck with each brush. It’s an amusing thing to you now, that you have longer hair than Kanda. He, who always had the longest hair, now has his trimmed just below his shoulders. His shimmering dark hair is also blended with the faded gray strands that had started to show a few years ago. Initially, the man refused to see it; and you remember helping him dye it solid every couple of months. Eventually, though, he gave up and now you’re admiring the salt and pepper look your lover sports. You think it leaves him with a very nice, dark metallic gray shade and it’s very fitting for him. It also looks charming in combination with the nice suit he’s currently in.

“That doesn’t count, because that was black mail. I didn’t want to do it.” 

“It does count, because you still did it.” 

“It wasn’t a suit either. It was dress pants and a white shirt. I don’t know why I’m dressing up like I need to impress these people. Unless you think wearing an expensive set of clothing is going to cushion the blow on our coming out.” Kanda flips his collar up and tries to adjust himself again. You can’t resist anymore and you finally move over to him to take over. 

The disgruntled pawing he makes at you dies out quickly and you end up with the tie in your hands, just as you suspected you would. “I know you can do this, but we also don’t have thirty more years for you to get it right. This isn’t going to be as bad as you think, you know,” you assure and fiddle with the fabric until it’s settling in place in just the right way to lay flat and look just as presentable as you’ve made your own look. “It’s not like they’re going to shun us for our choices in life.” 

He brushes away from you and checks out his reflection to ensure that everything is laying right. He’s a stickler for his appearance in occasions where he’s already unsure of himself. Part of you really believes that Kanda was hoping Lavi had figured you two out years ago, because then it might seem easier now. As of this moment, you’re only aware of three people who are completely clued in on the magnitude of your relationship: your dead Master, Lenalee, and Howard Link—who only found out because you made a mistake of kissing Kanda right in front of him without noticing. 

“They might,” he insists and you can’t help but shake your head. 

“No one had a problem when Timothy came out and I think at this point they’re more likely to be expecting us than Timothy. We’ve been living in the same house and travelling together for fifteen years. If that isn’t a red flag then I don’t know what is.” 

“I think they’re under the impression that neither of us have a sex drive, period. We’re just a pair of asexuals who hate each other, yet have no one else to stew in it with. Little do they know; we crawl out of the same bed every morning.” He shakes his head a bit and finally smooths out the last of the wrinkles he’s created by fidgeting so much. “Can’t we just tell the red-haired dumbass and call it a day? Why does this have to be a thing?” 

“It’s not intended to be a thing. We’re just going to go together, and behave like we normally do now. And maybe nod a few times when we’re asked about it and tell a few select people the truth so they’ll stop trying to set us up with wives…” 

“It’s a thing.” 

“No…” 

“Yes.” 

“Okay, maybe this will double as that; but I promise it’s not going to be a focus. It’s only if people ask. I won’t go out of my way to draw attention to us. I recognize that this is a fifteen year reunion above everything else. Though, I do consider myself defined by you. So you can’t expect me to pretend it’s not there.” 

“I didn’t say that either, you dope,” he twists his body to flick you and you shrink back, shoving him away with a push. “I’m not hiding anything; however, our relationship only matters between us. You know there are chances people will not like it and I don’t really give a shit what they think—but I’m not saying I won’t put someone on the floor if they take up a problem with us.” 

“So basically, ‘act normal and don’t make you hurt people’ are your requests?” 

“…In a nutshell.” 

You nod and grin mostly to yourself. He can’t see your face at the angle that shows just how amused you are. He pretends he doesn’t care, but you know better. The truth is, he doesn’t think he can stand to hear anyone making any less than savory comment about the relationship you share. He holds what you have in that high of a regard. It’s touching in a strange Kanda-like way. “I think I can comply with that. Now, if you’re ready, can we go? We’re going to be late if we keep dragging ass.” 

“Give me a minute, I’m—.”

You cut him off, raising a brow to catch him on his attempt to buy time. He doesn’t really want to go, but you really do and he’s doing this for you, really. “There are only so many times you can stall by fixing yourself up, Kanda.” 

“Augh.” 

“Shall we?” 

“I hope you know I wouldn’t do this for anyone else, for any reason at all.” 

“I love you too,” you smirk at him, walking with him toward the front door of the home you’d just arrived back at—stopping here only for a change of clothes and a healthy dose of memories to chew on later. 


	3. Chapter 3

“I’m not entirely sure if this is serious or if this is for the sake of irony,” he says as you both approach the building that is indicated on your invitation ticket. This is, without a doubt, the correct place and you raise a brow. You can understand where he’s getting that confused thought, because you’re having the same one. He draws in an audible breath and you both stand in front of the door. “…In a church.” 

“I hope they’ve made arrangements to have this place at least neutralized,” you idly comment, pulling him along toward the entrance, “because I’d really hate to walk in and have you set on fire.” 

“It’s not going to help if I hiss at you, will it?” His steps fall into place with your and you open the door as you approach. Part of you is nervous. You haven’t seen these people in many years—even Lenalee and Lavi. 

After the episode you had years back with Kanda—and your failed attempt to marry someone else—you both decided that you needed to put the silence behind you and stop living trapped in a house. So you both left Europe and travelled across Asia for many years. Being so far away, you’d lost contact with just about everyone. It isn’t until now that you realize just how long you’d vanished. You’d actually only come back this year as your final remembrance of Cross. It just so happened that you found the invitation on your doorstep [and a few other irate letters written in a pristine, feminine font—berating you for leaving without as much as a word]. It was good for both of you, though; and you felt like you and he had really connected this time. The tradeoff just happened to be loss of contact with the others.

It was an abrupt decision too, that’s why you’re nervous. You never even so much as said goodbye and you’re expecting them to think the two of you are dead. You cross your fingers as you enter through the lobby. There’s a familiar sense you’ve gained with Kanda that lets you know just where he is behind you and you feel comforted by his presence. When you start seeing familiar faces as you move toward the main Sanctuary, you force back the urge to walk closer to him. You don’t, however, and you maintain the comfortable range you always kept. 

Your goal was to act like you always do with Kanda and you know it’s not hard to do until you’re actively thinking about it. When you’re thinking about it, you want to hold him close to you. Moments like these, you ache to wrap your hand up in his and steal his warmth. You never do this sort of thing in public, but the feeling is much similar to those moments when you do. 

He must know you’re feeling that way, because you feel his hand on your back, sliding down in a comforting way—before he breaks the contact and maintains the usual distance. With this, you find it in you to smile. 

“Is that…Allen?” You hear someone say, and your attention is taken away from Kanda for a moment so you can look around and see who spotted you first. Looking off into the distance reminds you that you can’t see like you used to and you silently curse that you’d forgotten your glasses back at home—a fact that Kanda gave you hell for. He has his and for a second you’re envious of him. Then you remember that Kanda’s vision is worse than yours and you’re not all that envious at all. 

“It’s Miranda,” he tells you and you follow his apparent line of sight to see a familiar blur coming toward you—with another familiar blur in tow. As she comes into your clear sight, you recognize just how lovely she’s gotten and you really consider how long it’s been. Since the end of the war, you’ve seen subtle changes in everyone; but from this quick glance, you see just how much she shines—even with a few age lines gracing her face. 

“Oh, and Kanda too,” she says softly as she finally close. You recognize Marie with her and you smile at them—and earnest smile that comes from the happiness of their success together. No one was surprised when the two of them had decided to marry and you felt these two were closer than many of the others to you and Kanda—mainly because Marie was much like Kanda’s brother and your history with Miranda was somewhat special. Even so, you know these two know nothing of your relationship—perhaps that’s the only reason there’s still a spot of awkwardness in you. You really are over-thinking this and Kanda will probably pinch you if you keep it up. 

“We got the invitation just a few days ago. It was on our doorstep and we’ve been away for a while, so it was actually pretty fortunate we saw it when we did,” you answer and lean in when she goes to give you a brief, polite hug.

“We’re glad you could make it. Both of you,” Marie speaks, moving to where he can probably hear Kanda’s familiar heartbeat. The two of them have always understood each other in a way you haven’t comprehended yet, so when Marie and Kanda stand in silence for a moment, you simply let them be and focus your attention to her for the moment. 

“How have you been, Miranda? I haven’t seen you in…many years regrettably.” 

“It’s been a bit busy around here,” she admits, her eyes drop a moment before she looks back up and you can still see faint traces of her shyness in the way her hands fiddle in front of her. Some things won’t go away, you see. “We have three boys, two that are just getting into their teens and they’re a handful.” 

“Oh, I thought you only had two boys?” 

“The youngest is four now. It’s been that long,” she laughs a bit and you can’t help but smile and chuckle with her. 

Part of you admits that you might have been okay with children, but the most of you knows that Kanda was more than enough for you and you preferred to dedicate your life to one instead of more. “Well, belated congratulations then.” 

“I heard that you were getting married?” 

Ah, that. You’d almost forgotten that many of the others hadn’t been really clued in on the result of that or that you’d bailed on your wife-to-be so that you could go back to Kanda. That was a complicated moment in your life and you’ll never deny it. For all the complication, though, you understood that it built a deeper bond between your current partner. “I…was supposed to, but that never happened. I guess I’m just not meant for married life.” 

“He'd rather spend the rest of his life sharing hate-space with me,” Kanda’s voice wiggles into your brain and you realize he and Marie have concluded their brotherly moment and rejoin you. 

“I suppose I could congratulate you anyway, Allen,” Marie’s smile is a bit suspicious and your eyes follow down until you’re making a face at Kanda that he can read like you’ve written it on your face. 

“He figured it out.” 

From the person who originally made it seem like a bigger deal, you’re surprised and you blink at him for a moment before you have to stop and think before you speak. “Figured out  _ that _ ?” 

“A blind man could see it. I think we’re hopelessly apparent.”

“Apparent about what?” Poor Miranda just looks between you and him and you suck in a breath to calm your nerves. Marie knows Kanda well and he seems actually genuinely happy for the both of you. It’s loosening you up already and you politely offer your arm to her. 

“I’ll tell you on the way in? Let’s go see the others, I’m sure they’re not expecting us if you two didn’t.” 

“Yes, that sounds wonderful,” she takes your arm and you turn your head to see Kanda and Marie following you. If you squint hard enough, you swear you can see a smile on Kanda’s face. 


	4. Chapter 4

The first thing you go for when you get into the Sanctuary is the food. The rumbling in your stomach is probably the result of being a bit nervous about seeing people who you have seen in a few years. You can tell Kanda’s rolling his eyes before you even look at him, but that’s fine. He hardly eats and he doesn’t know what he’s missing anyway. You, on the other hand, like to try the widest selection of food you can—though that has become considerably less since the end of the war.

You also figure that it would be a good location for running into people you’re more familiar with. Many of the newer members of the Order are people you hadn’t really been much acquainted with and some of them—embarrassingly enough—you’d forgotten about. But food is a central location, you think, and that’s the reasoning you’re sticking with as you pick at the decadent selection and pass friendly greetings across the table. 

Kanda is somewhere behind you, speaking to an unfamiliar person—though you assume by appearance that it must be a Finder. He’s mentioned one before and you assume Kanda doesn’t have much of a good reputation with most of the other Finders—he once made it perfectly clear how he felt about them. 

After collecting what you want, you make a turn to leave the table. You halt once you realize that you’re about to run right into someone. It’s a scramble to collect yourself before you spill the plate on this person, but there’s even more of a scramble when you catch eyes with her. 

Gentle eyes are wide and staring at you like you’re a figment of her imagination. She reaches out to touch you, as if to make sure you’re real and your heart is pounding—as you expect her to slug you any minute for leaving like you did. You draw out the first thing you can think so say to break the ice and make this less awkward. “You cut your hair short again…It looks nice.” 

Those words shattered her illusion and she’s snapped back with the most incredulous expression you think you’ve seen from her—and you’ve seen plenty of them. “That’s what you have to say?” 

You shrink back sheepishly and say nothing. There’s no sense in digging your hole deeper and you really don’t know what to say anyway. You and your partner up and left without a plan or even a thought. You just acted and didn’t think about the consequences. 

“I thought you were dead!” She hisses and it reminds you of Kanda in a way. He hisses at you in that manner when you do something that warrants it. At least she’s got a very good reason to be curling her fingers in your suit and shaking you a bit. You did kinda leave them with the impression that you both fell off the face of the Earth. Though, Lenalee should at least have a better understanding of why you did—since she was the only one who knew about you and Kanda. 

“Sorry…” You say lowly and turn your head down, even though you’re still looking at her. She never can keep the mad expression up when you do this and even though you’re older, it still works; because she’s letting go and exhaling. 

“I was worried about you two…” She admits before she finally caves and draws you into a tight hug—which leaves you balancing your plate carefully and drawing a small chuckle out. “How are you both doing?” She whispers at your ear, assuming your intent to secrecy like you’ve maintained for this long. 

“We’re fine, we’ve gotten over the hill and now we’re just smooth sailing.” You know what she means, even if the words are neutral. After that last episode you both had while you were still here, you’re sure she was really concerned. “He’s definitely healthier than he was.” 

“I’m glad. Really.” Her eyes are watering and yet she’s smiling, her joy is evident in the way she squeezes you just a little more before she lets you go. You’re almost afraid she’s going to cry at you and you smooth down your hair nervously, hoping she’ll calm a little. You’d hate to be that guy. “Knowing you guys aren’t dead relieves me so much.” 

“…Y…yeah, I’m sorry about that. Given everything that happened, we just needed to remove ourselves from this place. We just needed to remember t—.”

“Allen?” A sharp exhale makes your statement die at your tongue and Lenalee turns her head, giving you clearance to see another familiar. “Holy shit, you’re alive?” 

It’s Lavi and you shake your head a bit; because he doesn’t realize that he just walked right past Kanda in order to get to him. Of course, you always stand out and you’re always easily noticed. Kanda, on the other hand, looks a bit different on first glance. He’s stopped wearing his hair back and it’s not the solid black they remember—not to mention it’s shorter than yours. He’s also in a suit and you’re fairly certain that he’s the last person anyone would expect to be in a suit. Without seeing his face, it’s easy to imagine Lavi completely bypassed him. “Yes, Lavi,” you answer. “We’re both alive.” 

He stares at you for a moment, questioning what that means. You point and he follows your motion until he sees your partner—who has finally managed to sneak around the food table in order to get a drink. “Who’s th—wait,” Lavi turns back to you and you give him a light smile and wave him toward Kanda. It’s almost rude of you to send Lavi after Kanda this early in the visit, but Lavi’s likely to have a cow when he sees Kanda now. You kinda want to see that. 

“He still has no idea?” You ask his wife when he moves out of direct earshot. 

“Nope. I haven’t said anything either. I figure that’s your business,” she nods and takes a sip of her own drink, settling comfortable beside you. She’s older now, but still lovely. Age has done her well and you’re pleased to see her happy. 

“We’re not going to hide it anymore,” you admit, picking off your plate for the finger foods, but still trying to be a bit polite about it. She’s aware of your ravenous eating habits—well in the past—but you still choose to show some manners for her. “In all the places we’ve been, we’ve realized that what we’ve got isn’t perfect, but as close to perfect as we can get.” 

“Hah,” she breathes deeply next to you and wipes her face a bit. “It’s so good to hear that. “When you left, Kanda scared us so much and you did too, really. I was almost ashamed of telling you right before, but…” 

“No…I’m glad you did. It’s just a shame that it kicked in at the last minute. I could have avoided that embarrassment if I’d gone back when I knew I should have.” You owe her more than she realizes. You consider back on that day when she approached you and told you what he said. The idea of Kanda taking his own life had unsettled you to the point where it was hopeless to even try to go on with the ceremony. That was the thing that jarred you awake and reminded you just how much you really loved him. “Fortunately, she forgave me for wasting her time.” 

“I think she could see it too. Kanda wasn’t the only one who looked sick, you know.” She snaked a hand behind you and rubs your back in a fond, familial gesture. It’s comforting that you still have this closeness with her after all this time; after you vanished, leaving everyone to wonder. What a wonderful woman she is. 

“Yeah. Even looking worn and old, we’re healthier than before.” Still, you know that you’re both slowing down and it’s been hitting you hard for a few months. You know that your lives will end before most of the people around you, but you plan to live it as happily as you can manage with what’s left. “We’re going to stay now, I think.” 

“Oh?” 

“Yeah, maybe we’ll venture off here and there, but we’ve seen most of the places in Asia we’ve wanted to see. We travelled for a few years in the Americas as well.” 

“The Americas? How was that? I remember the last time you were in North America…didn’t end so well,” she speaks softly and you know what she means. That was a difficult scenario; but without an underlying necessity, the Americas had treated you well enough. 

“Haha, well, it wasn’t so great when we first got there. We got lost…really lost.” 

“Allen…” She laughs and it makes your stomach flutter a bit, because you feel a touch of nostalgia and it’s so nice. It’s much like being reacquainted with family. 

“Well we did get found. Fortunately we found the nice locals and Kanda behaved enough for them not to kill us…We also received the blessings of the Natives out of it anyway. According to them, we’re as good as spiritually married, I guess.” 

There’s a momentary glitter in her eyes that you can see as plain as day and she tugs at your arm like that’s the most precious thing she’s heard. “I’m so happy for you. You’ll have to tell me about all of your adventures. You sound like you both had so much fun. It almost makes me forgive you for disappearing like you did.” 

“You’re never going to let that one go are you?” You cough and make that sheepish, pleading face at her, but she just pinches your cheek. “Argh, I guess not.” 

She opens her mouth to speak—probably scold you more—but her husband’s voice is louder and stops her short as he comes back, following Kanda. Kanda looks downright exasperated and he’s coming right for you, as if you’ll shield him from the annoyance in tow. Lavi never held back giving Kanda a hard time about anything and it seems that time hasn’t changed him too much; possibly because he looks the least aged out of the four of you. “Lena, look at Yuu! He’s wearing  _ glasses _ ! And he’s going gray! It’s crazy!”

“I’m one hundred percent done with you, idiot. Leave me alone.” Kanda peers up at Lenalee over the rims of his glasses, “please do something about your idiot, before I make you a widow.” 

“This can be your punishment for running off without a word,” she answers, turning her head. 

“Not gonna let that go, are we?” 

She just laughs at Kanda’s response and beckons her husband to her side, so Kanda can slink off to the other side of you. “You two couldn’t be more perfect for each other,” she states and both you and Kanda can’t seem to disagree. You stand close together and you both absently nod to her comment. You can’t resist your desire to twine your fingers with Kanda’s and you can see Lavi’s confusion start to really kick in. You’re sure he feels left out for a brief moment, but he’s smarter than his apparent attention span and you can almost see the wheels finally kick starting in his head. You wait for it. 

“…W…wait a…holy _ shit _ …”


	5. Chapter 5

The four of you are seated at one of the fold-out tables near a wall; a nice secluded location where the music in the background isn’t too loud to speak. You can’t remember when the music started to play, but it adds an atmosphere that makes everything feel a little freer than before. It’s like it takes away the stagnating aura and replaces it with a smooth jazzy sound to cushion the reacquainting process. With the years rolling by, it feels like some of these people are a distant memory and it only truly sinks in when you see them again. 

“So…this has been a thing huh…” 

A bubbling snicker starts and you turn your head to keep from showing it to him. Lavi’s still hung up on the ‘surprise’ of your apparent relationship with Kanda. This relationship has never been particularly hidden from him from your end; perhaps it has been from Kanda’s, though. You prefer to just act as you do and you were certain that running out on your wedding night would have been something of a clue to him that something else was prominent in your life. When you stayed by his side so adamantly, accidentally breaking ribs, he should have seen a little of something. Of course, Lavi was never really fond on the idea of same-sex relationships; so maybe he had been intentionally turning a blind eye. 

“For a long time,” Kanda answers simply—vaguely—and you let him. It’s relieving to hear it out of Kanda, because then you know from what point he considers you to be the most significant part of his life. Kanda’s been the essence of your life from the moment you decided to live through his hell with him. There’s a bond there that can’t be severed and you wouldn’t even want to try. He returns your sentiments with the same vigor. 

“No joking?” Lavi’s one shown eye seems to bounce between you and Kanda—light caught in the green of his eye until it reflects the curious nature above the initial appalled response. “Really? I thought you guys hated each ot—wait, I though you said that you weren’t gay, Yuu?” He leans forward, his hands on the table and his arms bend so he’s passing the sound along the surface of the table so as not to make it apparent to others. 

“I said it was a joke, because you looked at me like you were going to shun me,” Kanda snaps back and you wonder when this happened. This conversation definitely never happened in your presence. “You, who was somehow convinced I was an untouched blushing virgin, was telling me to go get laid. I almost commented on it, but too much effort.” 

“Dude, I wouldn’t have shunned you…It might have put me off for a sec; but come on, you’re my pals.” He seems earnest enough, but you know Kanda and he’s definitely not having that. There’s an aura of disinterest around him now and you know his reaction already. If there’s one thing people can say about you and your partner, it’s that you’re certainly on the same wavelength. 

“It’s in the past, I don’t care anymore anyway.” 

“Anyway,” you interject, before Lavi can drive his prodding fingers into him anymore, “it’s there now and now you can infer why a lot of things happened as they did some years back, you know…” You’re referring to that girl and that wedding that you pretended was going to happen and never did. It wasn’t meant to be, because your love for Kanda couldn’t be broken that easily. It would take more years than you have for that to be sufficiently trampled. 

“Does…anyone else know?” 

“Mostly no. There are a few people. Obviously you and Lenalee. Marie and Miranda know. Cross knew. And Link also knows. Other than that, we’re pretty quiet about it.” 

“When did you tell Marie and Miranda?” Lenalee leans forward a bit and rests her head on her hand. The way her voice pitches at certain words, and her mouth quirks at the corner, leaves you with the impression that she’s surprised by this. 

“We didn’t tell them exactly, Marie called Kanda on it pretty quick and it just went from there. It was nice to be honest, really. We’ve been weary about it; because let’s face it, Kanda and I? Last two people in the world right?”

“And even then,” Kanda adds. 

“Yes, even then.” 

“I don’t know,” Lenalee looks at each of you, taking in the particulars from you both and giving a strong impression of reflection. “You both really do compliment each other in your weird ways. Even if I hadn’t known for a while, I think I wouldn’t be surprised.” 

“Timothy!” Ever the conversationalist, Lavi breaks the discussion by sitting up and waving his hand at someone. Lenalee, feeling indignant about her words being muted by Lavi’s need to display himself so ridiculously, pulls him back into his seat—where he continues to beckon the young man over to them. 

“I was talking, Lavi,” she scolds and pinches him in the way that makes both you and Kanda wince. 

“Sorry, ow, that hurts,” he grumbles and backs away so she’ll be less likely to get him again. “I just saw him walk in and I know he was bummed when I told him that Allen probably wasn’t gonna be here. You know, little guy kinda looked up to him back then and I thought he’d like to see that he’s here…” Lavi points insistently and you suck in a breath and turn around. 

“Holy…Allen? No way? They said you died!” 

“Died?” You speak and hear an echo when your partner speaks the same questioning response. Neither of you had heard any rumors of your deaths—and your friends certainly had clued you in on that being a thing. 

“Yeah, there were people saying you just vanished off the face of the Earth and then others saying you died in an accident or something—right before you were supposed to be married or something, but you totally didn’t get married, did you?” 

The younger man looks at you and then flicks a quick peek over to Kanda, then focuses right back to you. You’re caught in a long silent moment and you can’t really construct a response to explain why you didn’t get married and you don’t think about making up some kind of reason why that rumor was ridiculous. All you can do is utter a strangled mess of sounds. “I…uh…” 

“I called it.” 

“Called what?” Kanda notices that look, of course, and he’s leaned back on the chair and gives Timothy a dark look over the rim of his glasses. 

“Hold on, I’ll be right back, someone owes me five pounds.” As sure as his words, Timothy turns and dashes off and you’re left staring at an empty space and listening to Lavi snickering behind you. 

“What just happened?” You turn back in your seat and sit quietly. 

“I think that little fucker just called us gay,” Kanda answers, giving the roundabout meaning of Timothy’s loose suggestion. 

“Yeah, but…we kind of are?” 

“He wagered on it, beansprout.” 

The wheels turn, if slowly, in your head as it sinks in. “…Hey!” You grumble and turn around in your seat again, with a rather concentrated expression. “He at least owes me fifty percent if he’s betting on me!” 

“Oh Allen…” Lenalee sighs—though you can hear the grin in her speech. 


	6. Chapter 6

The laughter around the table has settled in you until you feel an amiable bubbling in your chest. Lenalee has already leaned forward until she’s giggling into the tablecloth and Lavi’s leaned back with his opened mouthed cackling. Everyone’s loose and you feel ages younger than before. You’re almost taken back to the days when you all really were just kids fighting what seemed like an unfeasible fight. For a moment here, you’re free of the weight of reality and you exist for this moment, recollecting what was and what could have been. 

Kanda’s next to you, hip to hip with you so you could squeeze a few more people at the table, and he’s retelling one of the stories that make you want to jab him in the side. You don’t though, because he has a great story telling voice. The way he bows a bit forward leaves the shorter strands of his hair to trickle down across his cheek and he’s got the frames of his spectacles low on the bridge of his nose. It’s hard not to pay attention when he speaks, if for nothing other than looking at him in his years. Despite showing fine age lines around his eyes and the blended gray in his hair, Kanda’s really age well given how hard he’s been to his body. He’s so attractive that you can’t help but place a hand on his knee while he commits to embarrassing you with your extreme lack of tact in foreign countries. 

“So when the man tried to give him the damned thing, beansprout turned five shades of read and tried to back out. Then the man got offended because he started to refuse the offer. I tried to explain to him not to make needless commentary, but he didn’t listen. So now we have an ornate china cabinet sitting in a storage center for us to go get.” He’s entirely too amused and you turn your head and resist the strong urge to bite him. You had no idea that complimenting someone’s personal item would result in them giving it to you. You learned your lesson the hard way. 

“Oh god, beansprout,” Lavi cackles. You can feel your ears getting warm and you pinch just above Kanda’s knee until he jerks. He’s laughing at you in his own way, though and you puff you face at him. With a press of his thumb, he deflates your cheek and you just pout in place. 

“You’d think you’d know these things, man,” Timothy says, popping pieces of dried fruit in his mouth and drinking down the tea like it’s going to disappear. “I thought you travelled everywhere?” 

“Yeah…well, we’d never been in an area that had that kind of custom, you know? Kanda and I were only planning to make a stop in order to catch a boat. And…well, you know…” There’s no point in trying to salvage that fragment of dignity, because Kanda’s already taken it. 

“You ought to write a book about all of your adventures some day,” Miranda adds from the other side of Kanda. “I’m sure we’d all like to read that.” 

“No kidding,” Timothy spoke, animatedly waving his hand, “don’t skimp out on Allen’s embarrassing slips ups too, okay?” 

“Aw, come on, really,” you’re a leaf short of pouting. Kanda’s hand covers yours and gives it a light pat. He’s not apologetic in the least, but that’s fine. You’ll take his half-hearted attempts to sate your need to be comforted from your own idiocy. Even though he’s taken a shot or two at you, you still can’t be mad at him. You just let your mind draw out your threaded insults with the gently shifting music in the background. They might not understand how your barbed words are just play, so you keep them to yourself, to die with the pulse of the melody 

“Don’t worry, I’ve got a book worth of those alone,” he says and casts a look in your direction and you flounder—because he’s so delicious and cruel at the same time and you want to pinch him again. Which, that’s a funny thing you do, seeing as how he was the one who started the pinching habit. 

“I look forward to it, bro,” Lavi says and stretches. His chair’s legs cry against the floor and he stands with a grunt or two. “Well, the music’s just right, wanna dance, beautiful?” The redhead smiles down, but Kanda knocks him right out of his suave invitation. 

“I’ll pass, but thank you for the offer.” 

The table erupts into snickers and Lavi’s got the most undignified look on his face and for a second you think he might actually be really embarrassed. It’s funny enough to make you laugh at him too. Poor guy isn’t used to Kanda’s quick tongue, but you are. When he wants to, Kanda can be quick as a viper and clever as hell. 

“I…er…” 

“Lavi,” Lenalee covers her mouth to hide that she’s also affected by it, “I’ll dance with you. No need to persuade Kanda.” 

“You…Oh…I give up, man,” he grumbles and throws his arms up before he takes her hand and pulls her up to him until she lets a squeak out. “Let’s go dance, woman.” He clicks his tongue and leads her away from the table. She’s whisked away and you turn to watch them go out into the center of the floor—where the pews have been cleared for the event. They look good together, you think and you can’t help but lean on your arm for a minute to watch them move on across the polished wood. She’s so lovely in her formal attire and he seems to fit her like it was written in the stars. That sounds silly even in your head, but you’ve never lived the fairytale, so you pretend it for them. 

“They look great together,” you comment and Kanda turns a bit to watch them too. 

“Yeah, someone has to be able to tame that loser.” 

Kanda’s not exaggerating there. Someone had to be made to tame Lavi and it looks like Lenalee had and always will fit that bill. Everything about the two of them is complimenting and—in a way—it reminds you of yourself and your own partner. Kanda’s definitely rugged at the edges and you’re the softer counterpart that holds him in place. Without each other, you’d be incomplete in that way. The way he leads her across the floor, to the soft music in the background, makes your mind put yourselves in their place. The tune serenades a soft love story in the air—despite a distinct lack of words—and you really can almost taste the harmony. 

You’d be jealous of that riveting atmosphere, if you didn’t have that sitting at your side. Your own love story, while frayed and cracked, is as sustaining and precious. 

You can’t stop the desire that takes over and you slide back in your chair—testing the legs until you’re tipping it back so you can move out of it and stand. Kanda looks up at you, wondering where you intend to go; but you have no intention to go anywhere at all without him. 

One of your hands rests on his shoulder and you have the other steady and waiting for his. “How about it, Kanda, care for a dance?” Trickles of nervousness leave prickling around your neck and you have no idea what he’s going to say or how this hits his mind. You want to though. More than anything, you want at least this one moment; this one little fairytale. 


	7. Chapter 7

The world seems to dim around you and all you can see is what’s in front of you. Everything else is blocked out, but the man who owns the fragments of you that no one else can reach. He’s permeated you and continues to do so with his analytical gaze. You know he’s asking if you really want to do this; if this is how you want to make yourselves apparent. The ones who you hold most dear are already aware, but that doesn’t mean that everyone is privy to your status. Some of them may not even respect it; however, you don’t care anymore. They didn’t fight the fights you did. They didn’t experience the turmoil that threatened to unravel you both into broken husks of humans. If they don’t understand, then you just don’t care. 

“It’s okay if you’re terrible at it,” you insist—further insisting that he take your hand. You had every right to be on that floor as your two friends did. 

“They’re going to watch us, you know,” he responds, fixing his frames on the bridge of his nose. He’s already adjusting himself, turning in his seat and you know he’s not going to leave you waiting for long. 

“I know,” you answer and his hand reaches for yours until your fingers brush his. It leaves you with an eager tingle in your chest and you really feel like you can bring him to you without caring a lick about what others think. These people are your family and anyone who can’t accept, isn’t welcome within that bound. 

“Then I’ll let you lead, beansprout,” his sultry voice dances in your mind, leaving you blind to the people who have finally noticed that there was any exchange going on. Most of them would probably assume a prelude to a fight, but you know there’s no fight going on today. Fight as you will later, this moment is to commemorate that you made it. You’ve finally reached the point where the wounds that became scars are finally just traces in the skin of your souls. All your regrets are settled back for you to learn from and you move forward from here. This is not a monumental turning point in your lives, no, but it is a memory that will heal the lingering pain that may flare up between you. 

Your relationship is not perfect, nor will it ever be; but in a strange paradoxical way, that makes it perfect for you. He’s graceful, but he’s a terrible dancer and you both know this; you’re clumsy, but a terrific one. Just like that, you fit together like it was fate. Not that you ever believed in fate before, but your experiences among different cultures are starting to make you believe you were destined to walk his path in some capacity. What you did with that, was all your choosing; and his two. You both chose. That was the most powerful part of it. 

He slides out of his chair and your hand slides across his side, meandering around the curve of his clothed ribs until you can feel the taut muscles of his back through his elegant suit. He’s always looked good dressed up and you silently wish you could finagle him into this more often, but you’ll always take what you’re given. 

You step back and he follows you step for step. You can see that he’s tuned out the others as much as you have. Perhaps he feels the same things you do. When he comes close to you, curving his fingers around your hand—leaving your palms flat together—you can feel the calming waves of compliance and desire. It’s sensual, but not lewd. You don’t want to call it the aura of a couple in love, but…

“If I step on your feet, I’m not sorry,” he whispers, leaving the hairs on your neck standing from how close you realize his voice is. You’ve moved together by the time you’re within the bounds of what you would call a dance floor. Between you, you’ve managed to alter this dance into something less refined. There’s no real lead, even though he told you to take it. You’re both operating this dance in a gentle wave with no real plotted course. You’re just flowing, like a small tide pool just outside of the harrowing ocean. It’s a small place, but it’s yours and no one can invade it. Your fortress is in your arms. 

You don’t answer him, because words aren’t necessary when you can communicate through touch. Somehow, you’ve managed to get your feet and his into a sporadic rhythm and you inch your way close enough to lean your head close to his—your face in the crook of his neck. Likewise, he’s done the same to your other shoulder. The music’s tempo is slow and dawdling and it matches the slow even breathes you’ve begun to take—breathing in the atmosphere of you and him. 

God, you love him. So much it almost hurts. You can’t even express in words, because words are not enough and you don’t think they ever will be. If there are enough words in the dictionary, you don’t know them and you doubt English would be enough. Even if you’ve faced hard times, you’ve overcome them. Even if you came together under the wrong circumstances, you’ve transcended. Life has kicked and beaten both of you until you’re surprised you even survived to this point. 

But it was all worth it. This was worth every ounce of suffering that’s come your way. 

His embrace, blended into the gentle dance, is possibly the most rewarding thing you’ve gained from the hell you were born into. Now you can understand why there are people who are earnestly willing to die for the ones they love. You can understand Kanda’s reaction to your absence. When you love something so much, it becomes a part of you that can’t be erased. 

The vibrations of him humming along with the tune have left you holding your breath. You know you’ve got to be pink in the face and you curse your pale skin, because you’re so much more obvious than he is. In fact, you curse his composure too, because he’s never as flustered as you. Once upon a time, you wondered if he was feeling anything like what you do and now you know that is he. He doesn’t show it like you so; but the way his steps change and his sway alters just a bit, you know he’s encumbered with the glow of your tiny little world—the little bubble that contains you both. 

The soft wafts of his breath against your neck makes you close your eyes and hold him tighter. Neither of you care if your expensive suits are wrinkled; even after you both made such a fuss about ironing them out until they were pressed and creased in all the right places. Your life wasn’t a well pressed suit, but the folds and wrinkles that gave personality to it. 

You chuckle to yourself, because you’re comparing your lives to a suit and you know he’d think you’re crazy for it. You can even imagine the look on his face—a fine brow would rise and he’d glance over his glasses to see your face when you respond with the sheepish one you always had held in you for him alone. In fact, you had a lot of things held in for him. 

Only he gets your most earnest laugh. Only he gets this dance. Only he gets your love. 

The music shifts, but it doesn’t speed up and you maintain your pace; but he moves back a bit and he draws you into a different pattern where you’re face to face more than curled at each other’s necks. His nose presses into your cheek just beside your own—his forehead touching yours. He’s pushing out everyone else and he’s showing you the affection he feels. He doesn’t do it often and you know it’s just not the way he operates, but he’s not ashamed to do it when that moment comes and it touches you until your face feels feverish—just that he’s chosen to do this in a place so populated. 

With his eyes closed, he can’t see you watching him. The way his lashes lay long and almost touching the lens of his glasses. They stand out on his masculine, angular face. He’s gorgeous, no matter how you view him. Even with the metallic shade of his mixed hair and the hard-worked line around his eyes, he’s as perfect as he always was. He’s still untouched by time, because you’ll never see him for his shell, but rather for his soul. 

When he opens his eyes, he’s suddenly shaking you at the core. Those lovely dark eyes—slowly fading—have the clearest definition of what you mean to him. They’re glossy in a way that makes yours well up until you feel a flustered hint of embarrassment. He’s almost bringing you to tears just from being open. It’s ridiculous and you’re positive he must be laughing internally. 

If he’s laughing, though, you can’t tell. He doesn’t pause and you don’t either. Twining your fingers in his, you can’t help but nuzzle your face along his. The side of your face that has the faded mark that he cursed your presence for. You, the one whose hand he refused to shake, are the one whose hand is coiled in his. Your bodies flow like they’re extensions of each other; and now you’re starting to think you’ve spent too much time in the Americas, for all this spirituality you’re feeling at the moment. 

There are trickles of sound that do manage to come in from around you and you can’t discern what they are in terms of words, but you know there’s no hostility in them. No one’s cursing you. No one is calling you vile. Despite the horrible reputation of the church, you’re not being cast out here—which you find amazing, being in a church at this moment. These people understand. 

“Beansprout,” Kanda’s speaks low and it’s the only sound that makes actual sense to you. He’s the only focus you want to maintain—even if you thought you could break the trance you’re in. The whispers across your cheek tickle and you lean in more, pressing your face to his lips. “Thank you for loving me,” he speaks and you honestly feel like you could drown in those words. He’s said many things to you, but he’s never said these words in this voice. He doesn’t even have to say that he loves you, because you know more than anything else that these words mean that and more. 

“Thank you for letting me love you,” you respond and draw your hands from his to bring them to his face. You brush your fingertips across his skin and tilt your head. Somewhere in all this, both of you have stopped the swing of your dance. You don’t notice it consciously, but the others have stopped too. Your subconscious knows that you’ve taken control of the floor and their eyes are on you. It’s not every day you witness two people who seem to really dislike each other so close—close enough that you can feel the bond between them. You can feel it so much that it’s taken control of every bone and muscle and you’ve moved in on him, your lips brushing his with the faintest tease before you can’t control the full force of it. You need him like air and you’re going to show him right here. 

If he was ever going to back down, he either missed his chance or he completely threw it out the window. His arms crawl around you until his body is flush to yours. You must look silly, the thought absently flickers; and you kind of hope you do. Love is silly—you decide—so if you look at it, you must be doing something right. 

A jarring whistle nearly shakes you from your reverie and your eyes flutter open to see his doing the same. Man, you wish you could be lost in this forever, but you know you’ve already made the biggest scene you could have. The moment you offered the dance, you should have known it would descend to that point. You can’t be close in such a haze and not lose yourself. You’re not a blushing girl and you’re not a shy bride; but you flutter when he’s so close. The pulse you feel at his neck tells you that you’re not the only one. 

You back away from him just a bit, bashfully even—because you let that carry away like you didn’t have a care in the world if it was an indecent place to do so. He’s still close to you and he’s not in the least bit showing his response and you’re jealous of him there. His face is still the same shade, even if his eyes are watering as badly as yours. You’re both getting sentimental in your age. 

“Hey don’t stop on our account!” Timothy bleats from somewhere in the background and your face flushes again, just about the time you thought you were getting it under control. What a brat, you think and you turn your head to try and spot him—intent to get a lock on him so you can convey how much you’re going to give him hell for it later. 

The scattered chuckles break the silence and blend the rest of the room into the music and you can’t help but feel a little better. You didn’t blank everyone out in order to keep yourself from seeing their responses, but there was an uncomfortable spot in the pit of your stomach that was concerned that someone would have something to say. If not for being both male, then for being who you were. 

You know that you both might have let people down—people who held interest in you at different points—but they don’t seem to be disturbed. Your faith in people had dropped awfully low for you to be breathing such a huge breath of relief. You’re not sure what the relief is more from: being open with this now, or the fact that Kanda hadn’t shown a second’s hesitation in returning everything from the start of that dance. 

He’s come so far and you couldn’t be more proud of him. You can’t ever express how pleased you are with how he’s come from a broken doll to this confident man in front of you. Maybe he’s looking at you with similar thoughts, but you can’t see yourself for him in your eyes. You’ll never be able to imagine the transformation that’s come from his end. It has your vision blurring all over again and it’s not because you forgot your glasses. It’s because everything converges in you all at once. All the building fears, anxiety, and relief—topped off with the emotions this man just gave you…

“I love you, you stupid bastard,” you exhale, exasperated that he’s actually gotten you to the point where you’re wiping your face. You’re not sure how one dance can evoke this much out of you, but you’re not alone. 

His hand connects with your skin—the back of his knuckles grazing along your cheek and wiping any wetness from just under your eye. His thumb caresses along the contour of your cheekbone and he pulls you back to him. 

This time, it’s not a slow building caress, it’s forceful. It’s passionate. This kiss he delivers to you is strong enough that you have to turn your head and bring your hands to his face as well. 

That second, drawn out, kiss brings the liveliness back into your familiars and Timothy is whistling like he’s seeing a monumental thing happening. Even Lavi’s voice is crawling around you in the form of a cheer. 

Congratulations, you silently tell yourself, you’ve finally realized happiness and you’ve brought yourself to a point where anything that comes your way is a matter of meeting it head on. 

Kanda draws back again and you can’t help but smile that earnest smile—getting the rarer one from him. You know once this moment winds down, he’ll rescind back into his more reserved self, but for the moment, he’s going to ride along with you and live it up. You’ve all earned the chance to really exist as people and not soldiers. 

“Can we blow a cork in here? We’ve got a lot of shit to make up for,” Kanda’s voice is strong when it’s really drawn and your voice rises with it. 

“Everyone’s gotta take a shot for Cross!” You add and lean your body to the side, keeping him close to you. 

Lenalee and Lavi are close to you. You feel like Lenalee could cry outright and she drags Lavi along so she can wrap you in a hug. You think Lavi does it just to annoy Kanda, but he follows suit toward him and the four of you are a mix between laughing and crying like the younger teenagers you never were, in a messy hug of a circle. 

“In the middle of a church, no less,” Kanda mutters in the midst of it. You don’t think any of you care to chide him for the mirth that comes with it. 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sexual Content/NSFW

The two of you arrive back home, disheveled and carrying the coats of your suits over your arms. Kanda doesn’t care about the handling of these garments and he drops his coat across the table as they enter. You’re both soaking wet from the rain and yet neither of you care. You’re bubbling with good feelings—laughing—and he’s closing the door with a swish of his hip. 

“I think we’re covered for a bath,” you chuckle and drop your own coat in a chair—not paying much mind to the way the water drips off it and collects in a puddle by the legs of the furniture—water would dry. 

“Generally speaking, people are supposed to take off their clothes before they bathe, beansprout, but I suppose this can be laundry too,” he turns to face you, slipping his glasses off his face and brushing his wet hair back with his fingers. The front of his shirt is already half unbuttoned and you’re watching him idly pull the rest of his shirt open. “Something interesting you?” He asks and you flick your head, letting your hair flip back out of your face. It’s what you do when he’s pointed you out and you can’t come up with an immediate answer—a habit only developed when your hair overtook his and exceeded his in length. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you brush him off and turn, disrobing the extra layers you wore out of habit. Kanda was smart about this and he wore a coat and undershirt. You choose to wear more layers out of habit and you really feel the error in doing so when you’re soaked through. 

The party was more than what you’d imagined and you smile while you try to fix the soppy mess that is your hair. It’s morning now and you’ve finally freed yourselves of your forced stay there. You were actually grateful they offered you lodgings for the night. Walking back home was quite a trek in the middle of the night—even if you both walk everywhere for the sake of health. Sometimes, you just don’t have the energy or desire to do it. Of course, if you had walked back last night, you wouldn’t be dripping rain water all over your wood floors. 

“I think you know what I’m talking about,” he whispers and you almost jump. He’s suddenly so close to you that you twitch and turn. The heat you can feel off his body is a comforting presence from the chilled rain and you lean into him when he’s got you close. He’s got a sassy tone about him and you fizzle and perk at the implications surrounding that. 

The fabrics of your clothes pull and he’s helping you undress. Neither of you care if you’re standing behind your front door half undressed. In fact, it excites you that you can do this. This is your haven and you admit you’ve missed it. “You’re going blind, Kanda,” you tease and you suck in a breath when his cold hands meet the taut skin over the lower part of your back. He’s flush to your body with his hands pulling the material until it’s come loose of its tuck and he can knead his fingers into your bare body. You shiver when he’s drawing his hand up, bringing you close until his face he pressed to yours. Gentle teeth graze against your cheek and he opens his mouth to nibble and your skin until you’re actually laughing and squirming. 

He doesn’t let you go, though, and he keeps you captive in his arms until you’re retaliating with your hands at his shoulders, raking your fingers over the thin material of his shirt. “Perhaps I can be of some assistance in freeing you of your ruined clothes, beansprout,” he offers and you’re already giving up; because once he starts, you’re pretty much done for. 

His deft digits cover the buttons and slip them free of the rich fabrics until there’s nothing to hold and he can slip the layers off—one by one. The cool air hits your warm skin, leaving you with a pleasant hum in your body. The places his hands roam are the area that you can really feel sensations and you know it’s because he lights you on fire like a match in a dry brush. The sloppy wet sounds of fabric hitting the floor are muffled by your focus on him. While he’s busy drawing your body out of constraints, you’re busy fiddling with his belt, loosening the buckle, with intent to draw the leather strap from his waist. His belt is always a pain, but here—where you’re taking it as steady as the rain—you find that it slides free and clanks loudly against the wood, just by the chair where you deposited your coat. 

You’re both down to slacks and boots and it soon becomes slacks, because he’s stepping out of his boot—and likewise, you’re following suit. You remember, one upon a time, when this process was an ugly rush of hands and teeth, fumbling and unrestrained need. Now, it’s something more refined. It’s no less filled with need, but now it’s trained in the way he tilts his head, turning his face into your neck and leaving gentle bites at your throat. You press into his hold and roll your own head back—purring against his licks and nips. 

“Beansprout,” he whispers with a breath of air that tickles. “I’m gonna give you a head start,” he trails light kisses under your jaw and then licks your lips before freeing you, stepping back with that look in his eyes that means business. You know what that means and you let out an alarmed grunt and scramble to turn around—sliding across the floor in your socks. 

You’re lucky to get two meters away before he’s already coming after you. You clamor for the stairs and the adrenaline wells up in your chest until you’re exhaling in broken chuckles—voice rising with every step you ascend. He’s swift, but not overpowering you. There’s something about the chase that makes it more exhilarating. At the last step, you feel his fingertips graze across your back and yelp, darting quickly to the left and sliding across the floor to stop before you hit a dead end. You almost collide into him before you slink between his body and the doorway to your bedroom. 

Now you can even hear his slow, sultry, chuckles and you turn with both of your feed on the floor—slipping around. You wait for him to make the first move and you watch him—splitting your attention so you can balance and pull the socks off your feet before you hurt yourself. For just a moment, you both stand there—waiting—each placing a temporary time out for sock removal. There’s a glint you see in his eyes and the way the corner of his mouth is upturned, showing a fine line at the flesh of his cheek. 

He moves and you scramble to react—with a loud protest that could double as laughter. Even in your years, you’re both still swift and it takes a moment before Kanda can reach you. You’ve already rolled over the bed once, just barely making it out of his quick reach. The second time, however, he’s already within arm’s length and he pulls you back while you’re trying to scramble to the other side of the bed. 

You collapse into the mattress on your back and he’s standing over you, licking his lips until you’re wiggling to escape. The animated feeling as you’re captured leaves you just a bit more vocal than normally and he never tries to silence you. You think he likes when you’re hollering crackled chortles. 

He leans down until his face is touching yours—upside down to yours. There’s no remorse when he opens his mouth and trails his tongue out, dipping across an eye until your leg lifts to express your physical mirth. The kiss he draws you into is messy and ridiculous—his lips opposite to yours. It’s crazy and enticing at the same time. It doesn’t last long, because he’s suddenly absent from you and you open your eyes wide to wonder where he vanished to. 

Your eyes aren’t what finds him first, but rather the coiling instincts in your skin to react to surprise touches. The twitch in your body leaves you slightly squirming and Kanda’s hands are kneading across the skin of your belly. He’s made it around the bed and climbed up enough to keep you pinned from the waist down. 

“Beansprout…” He whispers and you wriggle against the way his breath vibrates, but more so when he opens his mouth and starts nibbling at your stomach. 

“K…Kanda…” You try to speak in the midst of a drawn breath, but he’s already nudging forward and delving his tongue into your navel until you’re just shy of squealing. He knows the spots on your body almost better than you do and he knows how to make you react. When his teeth and tongue collide against the dip in your belly, you bite back the bubbling urge to leave deep shrieking cackles to fill the silence of the room. “O…oh god…Kanda,” you hiss between the forced mirth—your body coming alive in protest. “No…stop…Kanda… oh my god…” 

“What’s wrong, beansprout,” he questions, giving you the falsest look of innocence you’ve ever seen. He knows exactly what he’s doing and it’s going to make you lose your mind. Especially true when he’s turned back down and intentionally growling against your skin—with his arms slipping under you and drawing you to a place where you can’t resist him without a real fight. 

“You’re killing me, Kanda!” You cry, your legs responding by wrapping around him while your arms make weak attempts to push him away. Your body is a paradox at the moment, because you want him close but you want to kick him off to make him stop driving you crazy. The muscles in your body tighten as your laughter persists and you’re just short of begging him to stop—fingers pulling his hair lightly until his attention turns upward at you. 

“That would be unfortunate,” Kanda murmurs, “if you died like that. Before I even get to the good part,” his breezy words spark a small fire in the pit of your gut and you have to pant to catch the breath as you go from one feeling to the next. The playful behavior of your partner doesn’t change as he climbs more up on the bed, his knees on each side of you and trapping you. His teeth continue to nip along the tight muscles of your body and you sigh in a spot of relief from his mercy. Before you can truly recover with a moment of relaxation, he’s already got you lit up. 

He leans up and runs his cool hands from your hips to your shoulders and you think you’re going to lose it already. His hips roll a bit and you’re acutely aware of just how aroused he is and subsequently how much you are as well. The soft groan that slips from your throat is evidence he’s already won this.

It’s been more than a long time since you’ve both had this sort of play in the comforts of familiar surroundings. This has been the first time since you’ve been home in many years, even. Perhaps it’s the way this place feels old and fresh at the same time—maybe it’s the rain. You don’t know. What you know is you both feel lively, more so than you have in a long time. You feel like kids, young stupid people enjoying each other as you should have been able to when you were actually still young. This brings the touch of a grin to your lips and he’s giving you those predator’s eyes that make you melt to his touches. 

Fire and ice, the two of you are and in the strangest of ways. “Mind if I?” He asks. It’s more of a tease than a legitimate question, because he knows he doesn’t have to have your permission to do with your body as he pleases. You’ve both long determined that your bodies are each other’s. His body resonates with yours, a dull claiming hum that’s filled with his presence and only his. 

You reach out to him, wrapping your fingers around the curves of his shoulder—kneading into the muscle beneath. Your thumb strokes across the dark skin tainted by the unwilling tattoo that’s branded into his skin. Possibly, this is the only mark on him and even then, it’s a charming mark for him. He’s dark and exotic to you in every aspect. 

“I think I can allow it,” you finally answer when he takes your hand in his and brings it to his lips, kissing the tips of your fingers until your arm is trembling from the weird sensations of delight it gives you. 

“Excellent,” he says, kissing your palm and inching back down your body—despite your insane desire to have him close to you. The desire transforms into another kind when his large hands palm at your hips and he does that horrifyingly sexy thing with his teeth—the one where he pulls the button of your pants open and takes the zipper down with his tongue. You swear he’s some kind of devil for his ability to do that without popping the button off. You’ve tried once and you ended up conceding to the use of your hands. His hands, however, are placed just under your hips, drawing the fabric down. The cool air hits the damp spots of your body—from where your slacks had been soaked through and leaving the rain to stick to your skin. 

The bed will have wet spots, you consider; but you really don’t care by the time he’s got your slacks pulling across your feet—leaving you displayed sideways on the bed for him. You might have been bashful, once upon a time; but you’ve long lost that. Instead, you can’t help but run your tongue across your teeth and give him a filthy look—bending a knee until he’s arching a brow and definitely feeling the heat. Even from where you are, you can look down your flushed body and see the outline of his reaction, jutting out from the way his black suit pants cling to him. 

This is a charming sight, but you want to see and feel more of it. Your body knows what it needs of him and he’s more than willing to give you that. “Kanda,” you lick your lips and draw your hand across your skin. “Don’t be bashful, now.” 

You’re taunting him; encouraging him to wiggle himself out of his pants and you want to watch him do it. It pleases you to great lengths that he complies. His pants are always looser around the waist and for once, you’re appreciating it; because when he leans forward a bit to inch the band down his hips, you swear in your head that it’s the greatest sight you’ve ever seen. Of course, you say this every time. Yet, somehow it never ceases to be true. 

Kanda’s body is a bit thicker than yours by design. He’s wider and his muscles lay across him a bit more pronounced than yours. He’s also still just a hair taller than you, but you balance each other out in ways you both find acceptable. Admittedly, it’s never been a subject of discussion, but you’re content with every aspect of him as you’re sure he is with you. When his form is bare before your eyes, it’s like a sensory feast. The details are still clear from this range and you’re grateful for the vision you do have. If it ever got to the point where you could no longer see Kanda, you would lament it gravely. He’s something of a treasure that you’d like to run your eyes across often. 

He steps out of the wet mop of fabric and he places a hand on your bent knee, running his palm down the front of your thigh from there. This motion elicits a needy mumble from you and you have no shame in just how much his closeness makes you yearn. Instinctively, you bend your other knee and exhale in a heavy huff. If this isn’t an invitation, then you have no idea what you just accomplished. 

It’s clear that he takes it as one, because he pulls his fingers across your skin lightly and withdraws—leaving you alone where you are for the time being. The anticipation builds when you hear the sound of a draw sliding across the room. Items are pushed around as he rummages for his goal and you’re seconds from making needy moans at him. In fact, you start with low, deep whines that barely reach across the room. Kanda’s hearing is exemplary, however, and the drawer snaps closed after he collects what he came for. 

His peppered hair is brushed back and laying across his shoulder in a way that amplifies that incredibly sassy look he’s harboring. This time, you can’t restrain it. “Play with me, damn it~,” you purr and his fingers tighten around what he’s holding. 

“Patience, beansprout,” he snaps back with a flair that makes you almost whistle in how pleased you are. His mood is incredibly good and you’re somewhat surprised given how you thought he’d be after a reunion. The reunion seemed to really bring everyone to closure and now you’re free to enjoy your frigid bastard being a little defrosted for a while. “Besides, didn’t they always teach children not to play with their food?” 

“Oh ho,” you beam at his peppy retort and reach and arm out to him, needing him closer and needing him closer now. “Yeah, but who cares about manners.” 

“What if I do?” Kanda comes closer at your beckoning, until he’s flush to the end of the bed, your knees touching each side of his thighs. All he has to do is crawl up on the bed and take you. It’s this closeness and this immediately unpredictable possibility that leaves you twitching and squirming a bit. You almost feel the need to touch yourself to entice him—and partially because you’re so turned on it almost hurts—but you refrain, just to let him draw it out and play. Despite his words, Kanda’s the type to play with his prey. “Because manners are very important in today’s society,” he accentuates, settling his upper body between your thighs so he can lean back down to pepper kisses across your belly. 

You well up with tiny giggles again and you want to pat him away. He’s going to ruin you like that and you’d let him and still be as conflictingly aroused doing it. He’s set the small glass bottle on the sheet at your side and chosen to recollect himself on the bed—drawing you back just a bit so that you’re both comfortable settled on it. Your lower half lifts a bit and you wrap your legs around his hips. His hot skin is flush to yours and it feels so wonderful that you don’t mind the few moments where you just mesh together, shifting in slow seductive waves. 

“Hmm,” you mumble and arch your body to his until you’re both sliding against each other in the most pleasurable of ways. You love this with him. It should be apparent, really, with as much as you’ve both done this; but you really do just love it. It’s so personal and something that only you and him have. No one has or ever had his body like you do and no one’s ever had your body like he does. This is a special thing for the both of you. “More,” you plead lowly, tempting him more—drawing out the twitching neediness that aches against your own. 

“Didn’t I tell you to be patient, love?” He nips and bites across pallid skin and you feel like you could crumble under him when he throws such a rare word into this. It’s not his style. He’s not the type to bring love words into it and, even though he’s mocking, it’s such a delicious thing when he does. 

“Patience is for people who aren’t absolutely, stupidly smitten, okay?” You admit and it kills you the way it draws a smirk across his face, showing the faintest hint of teeth at one side. That haughty grin of his is one of those damnable things he does that you classify under satanically sexy—not that everything else isn’t just as attractive. 

“Who can argue to that?” He snickers—which is really just a short sound of air across his tongue and teeth. His expressions, you’ve learned, are unusual, but no less expressions. They’re just expressed in Kanda metrics. The cool hands massage the muscles of your thighs as he draws his legs more under him to give him more stability so he can sit. You hate when he does this because it makes you yearn so much that you feel stranded and overload your senses with expectant desire. You really don’t hate it at all, you just wish you did—as a way to excuse how you feel like this. When he takes control as completely as he is, it unglues you quickly. 

The small bottle finds its way back into his hold and he’s watching you the entire time, gauging your response to every motion he makes. It’s so hard not to watch him roll the cap and collect the slick liquid across his fingers. It’s hard not to show how much that makes every nerve in your body curl—waiting for it. The cap is slid back on and he drops the bottle somewhere on the bed next to the both of you while he repositions himself to get a good comfortable reach under you. 

The muscles in your legs burn as you lift with him to give him the access he needs. The burning is half from your excitement and the way your toes curl hard enough to pull the burn up your leg. There’s a moment where you hold your breath and relax yourself, though, and his intimate touch pushes, slipping passed muscle and reaching into you. You once remember not liking this much; not like Kanda did, anyway. Now, however, you’ve learned how to take it easy and give yourself the relaxation it needs to feel good. It also helps that Kanda’s a lot more patient than he once was. 

You can feel the two fingers curl and the way they brush up makes you suck a deep breath. He’s such a dick in a way, because he always goes for the mind-blowing spot first and then retracts it so you can stew in your expectancy for more. He loves to tease you and it’s always worse when he’s in a particularly playful mood. You can ignore how much of a bastard he is, when he begins a push-pull rhythm that really feels incredible. 

“Auhh,” you croak and lean your head back; closing your eyes to the sensations he gives you. It’s quite a change from how your journey started and you’re more than pleased with this development. He’s really evolved into someone who knows how to love and be loved. The pride you felt in him is turning out to be such a constant feeling and you can’t help but smile. 

“I see you grinning up there, beansprout,” he teases and you’re caught. He knows you’re thinking things up here and you don’t care if he makes fun of you for it. It’s just a fact that your emotions are a little more prominent and your thoughts are always just a bit more focused on him than anything else—or at least outwardly they are. You know Kanda’s thoughts are centered around you and you don’t have to guess anymore. 

“Sorry,” you slip and hiss back the almost-moan from the way he jerks his fingers as if to punish you for being so silly. One hell of a punishment, you think. “I can’t help it.” 

“Such a sappy sprout,” he snorts and pulls his fingers up in a long circular motion until you’re so close to giving up and mewling. The years have made your body much more sensitive. You’re no longer forcing your brain to ignore pain and without that instinctive block, you can feel everything stronger. It’s been the same for him, you noticed. There’ve been times when you thought he was going to blackout on you from the way you’ve learned to really ruin his senses with your mouth. 

“Aaah….sshole…” You grunt and curl a hand in the sheets while he’s intentionally hitting the spots that make your eyes water and body tighten.

He suddenly withdraws, swift as Kanda can be, and you want to kill him in that instant. That instant passes, because he’s bringing his pelvis closer to you and you’re holding your breath because your whole body is throbbing now. Your fingers are almost cracking with how tightly you’re curling them. Worst of all, he’s slow and taunting about it in moments like these when he can tell that your body is begging for him to collide with it. 

Your legs shift and he’s got you lifted enough ease into you—which you really want him to—but he’s damned insistent on rubbing himself against you first so you won’t force yourself to restrain the frustrated thrashing you want to do. You know what he’s waiting for and you never win this because he’s a lot more patient when it’s his turn to own your body. “Kanda…don’t you dare…” you swallow thickly and keep forcing yourself to formulate words, “hold out on me. I want you…now damn it!” 

There are no objections and you flinch for just a moment and clench your eyes closed as he pulls you to him—drawing you across the mattress, instead of him coming to you like you expected. He always does that, picking whatever can throw you off the most. It’s what makes this amazing, you think. 

His breaths are louder now and you listen, panting in time with him. That he breathes these breaths for you is a handsome reward for the struggles you both endured. “Move,” you usher him and clamor to wrap your legs back firmly around him until he’s repositioning himself to lean over you. You like it when he’s face to face with you and he’s right at your neck now. That damnable tongue is already at the curve of your neck and he’s licking and sucking up to your jaw, blowing air over until he’s drawing out the ticklish spot by your ear. 

You can’t tell what’s forcing reactions more out of you, the way he’s rolling his hips again and gliding into you in a smooth, even rhythm, or how the rest of him is eliciting every other response he thinks he can force out of you. You’re torn between laughing and filling the otherwise silent room with your loud, unrestrained moans. You don’t even care if you’re expressive here anymore. It’s well beyond the years where you had to be quiet. Even Kanda’s louder and more willing to vocalize than before, when the instinctive pride seemed to make you both need to repress. 

The light grunts that match the bubbling noises you’re strangling back make you let them free and you bring your arms up to circle around his neck and down his back enough that it almost seems like you’re holding on to him for dear life—and you just might be. You don’t know, you’re not focused on cognitive thoughts. The angle and precise force of his motions is combining into a dangerously thought destroying thing. You think you’re very fortunate with Kanda, because he’s more in tune to subtle sensations and he can feel the muscles at your calves and across your chest bunching with every pleasurable spot he takes and makes his own. His hot mouth makes its way to yours and you lap up his desire with your own tongue, colliding with him in a practiced manner that honestly feels like you’re both drawing the life out of each other. 

It’s hard not to lose yourself. It’s hard not to just draw him down and empty your desires into the most forceful kiss you can shove on him. That overwhelming sensation you tend to get when you never feel like you can love him enough always hits you at moments like these and it’s really a bonus that Kanda feels this. The tension in your arms makes him hike you up and get just a bit closer so he can utilize at least one hand while holding himself better over you. 

The pleasure slithers through your pelvis until you incoherently babble at him. His thumb strokes up your aroused flesh and his fingers coil and pull just enough to both relieve you and set you ablaze. By now, his rhythm is moving a bit faster and you’re pulling him with your legs to increase how much he sinks into you. The steady pants between you behind to sound like a sultry song and you’re pleased to know it’s longer than the average melody—because you really don’t want it to be over, not too soon. You like the full feeling of being his. Generally, it’s he who takes this role—it’s just always been his preferences, but here you both withdraw your usual and commit to the excitement of something different. 

Of course, Kanda’s still Kanda and he can’t restrain that horrible desire to make you spout aroused laughter like a confused fool. His tongue dips into your ear and shivers overtake you, mixing your sensations until everything is sexual. He’s sticking his tongue in your ear and you honestly feel it’s just as sexually tantalizing as the other appendage he’s ravaging you with. Your confused brain can’t handle this and you collect a fist full of his hair in one hand and mash garbled combinations of giggles and sexually drawn whimpers. There’s a bit of squirming you’re doing and he’s eating it up like candy—if he was into that sweet stuff. Now you kind of understand what he meant with the playing with food comment. 

“K…Kanda,” you struggle with his name like you’ve never spoken a word in your life and he knows you’re helpless. You can’t stop him because you want it and he’s not gonna stop because it’s taking him just as far as you. His fingers slide across your twitching skin and he’s kneading you so that you can’t even think anymore. 

His body tenses under your touch and you know he’s coming unraveled—and you welcome it. You want to feel him lose it against you. That’s a power you like to have. It’s not a forceful power, but the most subtle one of all. You’ve managed to take Kanda Yuu’s emotional response and dominate it. When you both do this, he’s putting everything into it. He bites at your ear and licks the spot until he’s at his breaking point, jerking a little harder into you and panting like he’s not gonna make it much more. 

He swallows and you can hear him bringing air into his lungs at your ear. He’s so close you feel like an extension of him and when he whispers in your ear you almost cry like an idiot at him. “I love you, Allen,” he presses his face warmly to yours—his eye at yours until his lashes tickle your eye. 

The tension that passes through his body seems to leak to yours and while he’s draining the last of his energy into you, pressing himself close and moving in slow quit motions—you’re feeling the build and peak until you’re turning your head to get him into another mash of lip and tongue. You can’t help the way you almost suck the air out of his lungs when he’s still stroking and draining the intense pleasure out of you—leaving you with this hazy cloud of bliss that he’s already swimming in. 

There’s a small period where both of you have to catch your breaths and you manage to stay composed before at least Kanda clears up enough to alter his position. You’re still feeling like jelly, so you let him commandeer the recourse of your bodies. There’s a momentary sense of loss when he pulls from you and guides your legs to lay flat. If you were more coherent, you would thank the size of your bed for this not being an awkward thing to perform sideways across the mattress. 

His warm skin comes back in contact with you in the way of him settling down against you. He’s not lying on top of you exactly, but his body is overlapping yours in a comfortable way that has you face up and him face down so you can both turn your heads to touch. The heat of your bodies and the cool air contrasts in just the right way and you feel a pull at your consciousness. That’s the draw of sleep that always catches you when it’s this intense. Kanda’s eyes look hazy too, half-closed and blinking slowly while you both settle back into normal breathing patterns. He’s as close to dropping off into sleep as you are—neither of you caring how naked or filthy and wet you are. 

“I love you too, Kanda,” you murmur quietly and close your eyes. The subtle movement is lost in your sluggishness, but you feel a wet tongue draw from your cheek up to your eye in a ghost-like fashion and you can’t restrain the sudden yelp it draws out when those chills hit your spine. “…D…damn…it…K…anda.” 

“Heh.”


	9. Chapter 9

The sound of dishes clanking around you sets the atmosphere to something casual and open. You and your partner are seated next to each other; across from the two people you’ve considered your closest friends. The restaurant is teeming with life and that’s why you think of it as such an open place. There is chatter all around you that drowns in clarity until it’s just a steady whirr of noise that gives you a very social feeling. It’s been so long since you’ve been to something like this that wasn’t out of courtesy and was around familiars. 

Kanda is at your side and he’s picking through a plate of a sampler styled dish that came in parts and was ordered between you. It’s come to the point that you and he have turned into experimentalists. You rarely eat the same thing twice within a certain period of time. That’s not much of a change for you—you’ve always been a varied eater—but Kanda’s always been the singular meal type of person, so this is unusual for him. Well, at least it’s unusual for those who aren’t aware of the long term changes in Kanda. 

Across from you, Lenalee is making pitying looks at Lavi and you almost feel bad for him. She’s been aware, but he hasn’t and he’s still obviously a bit awkward about it. You and Kanda haven’t changed much; but to him, this is a major life changing difference. You can already see how he’s acting a little different now that he knows. 

“You’re just imagining us having sex every time you look at us, aren’t you?” 

Unfortunately for you, Kanda has no tact and you just groan inwardly and shake your head—smacking your palm lightly to your face. You knew this man wasn’t the type to be indirect, but that was a bit too direct this early in. Dinner wasn’t supposed to start off with awkward visualizations and insinuations. Still, some part of you is cackling under your breath, because Kanda is probably right. You have to admit; you sat back and thought about Lenalee and Lavi and what they did behind closed doors. That’s a rather natural curiosity, you believe. 

“N..no I…No. Dude, no,” Lavi sputters and even his own wife is making light of his internal suffering with her expressions and inability to keep her face toward him without showing obvious signs of mirth. She’s not discreet because he puffs his cheek at her and tries to shake off what he’s obviously thinking about now. “Look man, it’s not my fault! You guys just….you…” 

“We…?” Kanda eggs him on and you almost consider pinching Kanda to make him stop. You know Lavi’s not very open about what your relationship means and you don’t really wish to rub it in his face, but Kanda does. Kanda is probably considering this as close to payback as he can get for a life of being hassled by the obnoxious redhead. 

“You…you’re both…” 

“Extremely attractive? We know—.” 

“No! No, damn it! That’s not…I wasn’t…” The redhead leans forward and buries his face in his hands and tries to compose an actual response. It’s funny to you, because Lavi’s always been the observant one and he’s always been the one to take surprises best. Maybe you can kind of understand him. You and your partner had gone out of your way to keep what you have as an under-the-table situation. Now, it’s open and suddenly Lavi has to realize all the things that he’s missed. It’s probably annoying too, that he’s been left out. You consider that he probably would have wanted to be in on it, even if he has this slight aversion to the same-sex oriented relationship. 

“Lavi,” you interject, before Kanda can open his mouth and give the poor fool more hell. “Does it bother you to know?” You ask, not meaning to sound like you’re interrogating him, but rather to see where his stance is on it. If he’s really against this, then you want to at least try to make the best efforts to keep from shoving it in his face every time you’re around him. 

Lavi looks up, his one green eye glittering from the flickering candle light. The deep exhale of breath is possibly a symbol of defeat, but you’re not sure. What you do know is, Lavi’s composing himself and trying to keep his attention from Kanda while the man’s not harassing him. “No…It’s not that. I’m just…kind of surprised? I guess. I had been under the impression that you were both still ripping each other’s throat out.” 

“Well, we never gave you any reason to believe otherwise,” you nod and take a bite out of the first thing your fork digs into—savoring the rich flavors. “We didn’t hide it just to mess with you, you know.” 

“But we don’t mind messing with you.” 

“ _ Kanda _ doesn’t mind messing with you.” 

“ _ We. _ ” 

“It’s not  _ we _ yet, Kanda,” you scold and wag your fork at him as it slides off your lips, leaving the next morsel of food behind for you to chew down. You lean a bit closer and turn your head toward him, “I have to make sure he’s not mentally ruined, then it’s fair game.” 

“ _ Hey! _ ” Lavi cries and looks between the two of you like you’re plotting his destruction or something similar and equally as heinous. 

“We’re just kidding, Lavi,” you say—even though Kanda’s giving you this ‘but are we really?’ look from your side. You pretend to not see it, but Kanda knows you’re not capable of missing it. It’s in his nature to be devious, you believe. He’s just not had a good hand in being able to really show it. Now he can and now he certainly does. “I promise. We just want to go about like normal, yeah?” 

“Normal for you isn’t normal for me anymore and you know,” he fixes his hair away from crowding his face—using it as a device to keep him from obviously fidgeting, “I’m not that disturbed really, I’m just curious about some things.” 

“Curious?” 

“Yeah, like…when? When the hell did this start and how did I miss it? This can’t be a new thing if you’re acting like… _ this _ . Was it after that girl you almost ran off with?” Lavi’s questions are definitely reeking of his confusion and you laugh internally, because his timeline is going to be really skewed when he understands the scope of it. 

“It’s definitely not new…It started something like sixteen years ago,” you admit and Kanda nods in confirmation. 

The man across the table actually leans in with a seriously unsettled expression. “…Sixteen years? Wait, that was before…how is that even possible? O…Oh well shit, I didn’t know…I probably said some callous things…” 

“I really didn’t care that much,” Kanda admits and picks a piece of cooked food up with his fingers—completely destroying the table manners associated with using a fork. You’ve both really been gone too long if he’s not even realized this is probably appalling to refined people. “I just didn’t speak any more in that direction and I brushed you off with your wife's talk. If you were going to know, you’d find out another way. I tried once and that was all I attempted. It’s not like our relationship was meant to be spoken anyway. We lived together and that was probably about as much as anyone knew.” 

“I’m just surprised that no one else really thought about it,” Lenalee piped up from her husband’s side. She had a hand on Lavi’s shoulder, patting it comfortingly—but mostly in pity for his lack of awareness. “Two people who supposedly hated each other, chose each other to live with? I guess now it seems like a giant red flag.” 

“I just never pinned either of you for …you know…” 

“Gay?” You offer, not really bothering to stifle it with hinting words. It is what it is and there’s no point in skirting around it. 

“Well yeah, especially with that marriage thing you had.” 

“That only happened because of a temporary…hiccup in our relationship,” you whisper just loud enough to be heard. You’re not proud of that particular moment, because you know that you’d really screwed with Kanda’s head in leaving without much of an explanation. It leaves you with guilt and you wish you had never taken it that far; especially considering just how dearly you love the stupid bastard. 

“Still, that kinda had me pinning you for straight, man.” 

“What about me?” Kanda draws his attention by pointing his newly acquired fork—used to steal small bits off your plate, while you are stealing bits off his. “I don’t think there’s a single person who didn’t think I was batting for the home team.” 

That leaves Lavi dry for commentary for a moment, because it’s clear to you that Lavi has probably considered it. He’s scrambling for an answer that sounds best, but he gives up and just focuses his expression on you—to avoid being direct toward Kanda. “I guess I thought you might, but then you showed no interest in anyone, so I just assumed you were more in the range of absent.” 

This earns Lavi a strangely animated chortle from Kanda and the redhead actually sits back like he’s been punched in the face. It’s possibly the only time Lavi’s really seen Kanda’s outward shows of expression in this capacity. You’re used to it, but he’s not. He’s seeing Kanda’s range and it’s obviously startling. He doesn’t get why that’s so funny to Kanda, but you do. You do more than anyone. 

“Do you realize that you’ve always been several steps behind me?” Kanda asks and draws his glass of a pale, light wine to his lips—taking an easy sip while keeping his eyes on Lavi. 

“What do you mean?” Bewilderment is Lavi’s theme tonight, you conclude. You’re not sure where Kanda’s going to go with this, but you’d both spoken about this and decided that you were going to be honest with the two people you considered to be your friends. These people had been with you both through the worst of it, after all, and now you wanted to be with them during the best of it. 

“I’d been washed of my innocence—no pun intended—long before you. By long, I mean probably before you had even started making jokes about it.” 

“Wait, just how long before me? And how the fuck did you hide this?” 

“Hiding it is easy. I’m not female, so I didn’t have to worry about the risks of it and when your body heals anything, there are no traces to be caught on, you know. I rather enjoy your pure view of me, though,” he smirks over the rim of his wine glass. You find it attractive when he does that—because you know he’s being smug. “It’s just a shame that this view has been wrong since the beginning.” 

“If this is the case,” there’s a pause as Lavi reaches for his own drink, “then why and how did you end up with Allen? You guys hated each other…and still pretended you did forever.” 

“He forced his way in, really. Crude little shit that he is.” 

You snap to attention and immediately add your own commentary, “not in a brutal kind of way…Not like that! He’s making it sound bad.” 

“He martyr’d his way in. Is that better, beansprout?” Kanda draws a hand up and pinches your cheek lightly and you snap your jaws in a weak threat to bite him for making you look bad. “Easy now, I didn’t say anything negative. If people want to interpret ‘forced’ as a negative connotation, that’s their fuck up.” 

“It sounds negative when you say it like that.” 

“Well excuse me, princess, but you did just that. I don’t recall asking you to rescue me.” 

“Wait, if you’re calling  _ me _ the princess, then why the hell did I come rescue  _ you _ ? Doesn’t that make  _ you _ the princess?” 

“We’re gay, beansprout, we’re both princesses.” 

A small laugh from the lady of the table breaks the inward bantering and you turn your head indignantly. “Whatever, I saved you, end of story.” 

“Why thank you, what ever would I have done without you,” Kanda bows sardonically at you and you prod at him with your fork. “Watch what you’re poking, you might incite a riot.” 

“What are you even talking about…a riot…” You scoff at him like he’s just talking more nonsense. 

“I’m fairly certain I could start a riot by throwing you across this table and making you into my dinner,” he states boldly and you can see Lenalee nearly covering her face—her cheeks pink enough to show just how flustered you’re both making her. There’s a large grin across her face—that you catch between her fingers. Lavi on the other hand, is making the expressions of a gaping fish and you almost want to see if you can throw a bite sized food morsel into his mouth—you don’t on account of manners, however. 

“You said you’d behave,” you remind him and shove your shoulder against his, nudging him just a bit. 

“I agreed to keep physical damage to a minimum.” 

“I think you’d probably damage some things if you did that, you know,” you roll your eyes and he leaves his haughty expression on, just for you. 

“I’m sure I could manage without breaking anything of value,” Kanda shrugs and moves his hand directly toward you in the weak attempt to flick you. You stave him off by holding his wrist before he reaches you. 

“What about my spine?” 

“You don’t need that.” 

“I guess you wouldn’t mind a vow of chastity, then,” you mutter with a hint of teasing and he double-takes, opening his mouth for a reply—but you cut him off before he can snap one at you. “Chocolate?” You hold a piece out and wait for him to recoil like he usually does when you offer something sweet to him. 

“No.” 

“But…Chili pepper chocolate,” you drawl, enticing him, and rather effectively. You feel a bit self-satisfied when he breathes in for a silent moment—hesitating. He can’t resist it and you know it. You’ve managed to corner him and you’re not going to withdraw. His broad shoulders sink and you meet him halfway so he can bite the spicy-sweet thing off your fork. 

You lean against him and slide your arm down his until you catch his hand under your fingers. You lace yours with his and you don’t care if you’re in sight of others. You’re actually somewhat out of the open, but you’re still very public. “You’ve still got bruises on your hands, Kanda,” you announce as he’s lost in chewing the one saccharine thing he really does like. 

“Well, if you’d stop that bondage shit, then I wouldn’t look like I was mishandled,” he licks his lips and doesn’t even bat an eyelash when Lavi chokes in the background. Kanda’s making up things, of course, because you don’t restrain Kanda anymore—once upon a time, maybe, but not now. Kanda’s just taken up a habit of smacking his arms into things and leaving marks and you’ve taken a habit with poking fun at his lack of sight for being why he runs into things. Though really, it’s a frightening thing that he bruises for such periods of time. If you didn’t make light of it, you’d probably worry incessantly. 

“I didn’t see you complaining when you were mewling like a kitten.” 

“I do  _ not _ mewl.” 

“Oh my god, you two stop,” Lenalee’s voice finally breaks and she’s squirming in her seat, arms twitching like she wants to reach out and just shove the two of you together. “You’re so cute it hurts.”

“He’s cute, I’m not,” Kanda announces, even though you know he’s about as wrong as he could be. Kanda’s more precious than anyone you’ve met—even if it’s in a very gruff, raw way. Without inhibitions, Kanda’s a very refreshing personality. “Beansprout’s the one with the cute problems.” 

You ignore his statement, because he’s wrong anyway and you poke across the table to see if Lavi’s actually going to comment. “Lavi? I think we broke Lavi…” 

He does finally respond, though and you have to laugh, because you think he’s taking it well after all. “..Fuck man, she’s right.”


	10. Chapter 10

“Hey Kanda, do you believe in reincarnation?” You ask to break the silence as his fingers dance along the muscles of your back. You’re face down on a blanket and he’s leaned over you—seated with his legs crossed in front of him. The way he draws the tension out of your muscles makes you pepper your words with the slightest hints of a moan. He’s gotten so good at massaging your tense body and he seems to enjoy the activity enough to instigate it. He just likes touching you, you think, and you’re certainly alright with that. 

“Reincarnation? Hm, hard to say, given my past and you seeing souls, it’s really…how do you really explain that?” He replies to your question and you turn your head just a bit toward him—and away from the flickering warmth of the fireplace that you’re both relaxing in front of. “You have said that souls move on, but I’m the product of soul misplacement, in some respects.” 

“That’s why I wonder,” you murmur when his thumb grinds against a particularly knotted spot. “In all the places we’ve gone, we’ve seen so many different beliefs in life and death. I just wonder what one actually applies to us.” 

Kanda settles closer in order to nudge his fingers in the dip of your spine. “I’m fairly certain I’m probably going to hell if it exists. What they do with you, I don’t know.” 

“What do you mean, what they do with me? I’m going wherever you go,” you scoff at his negativity with a certain grain of conviction. Hell is probably too much of a punishment for the both of you and you really don’t want to be reacquainted with Cross just yet. He’s got a lot of time to stew in the fires of the afterlife by himself before you take a seat anywhere next to him—though you really can’t imagine any of you deserving hell for the suffering you’ve faced. 

“What if that doesn’t happen though? What if there’s nothing after this? All this talk about souls and whatever…what if they just dissolve without a body.” 

“I couldn’t believe that, you know,” you stop your speech for the crack that nearly makes you hiss for how good it feels. “I…oh, wow, that felt good…Ah, anyway…with everything I’ve seen, I can’t shake knowing that souls aren’t just a fragment of consciousness settling to die.” 

You can feel Kanda’s body tensing as he prepares himself to move. He crawls up a bit and bows over you, readjusting himself to sit across the span of your thighs. You like when he does this, because it feels like you’re both spiritually flowing in the same direction. He’s close and kneading into your body while you’re accepting him and breathing in time with him. You can feel the movement of his blood through the skin that’s touching yours and it’s a calming effect that even overrides the steady crackling of the firewood that’s keeping you both warm. 

On days like this, you and he simply abandon the rest of your home and you barricade the entrances so nothing can disturb you. You lock out any potential visitors and muffle the sounds of the dogs barking next door. If it’s light outside, you’re not aware; you’ve shut out the rest of the world until it’s just you and your partner inhabiting a personal space. Neither of you has a shred of clothing on, but it’s not a sexual bonding. What you have here is what Kanda jokingly calls a sensual ‘love nest’. He’s mocking, but it may as well be true. It’s just a place for the two of you to be close and cut out everything else. 

“What brought on all this talk about what comes after?” He asks and lowers his body closer to yours—bringing his lips to your shoulder and leaving light, airy kisses along your skin. “I sincerely hope you’re not planning to drop dead any time soon, because I have a severe problem with that.” 

Your eyes close and you stretch out under him, exhaling a soft breath in delight at the tingling sensations he gives you. “I was just wondering what you think, you know? I’m not planning to die on you. It’s just a thought I’ve had. We’re both getting old now…at least compared to our friends…” 

“Old, but not dead yet,” he nibbles up to your neck and lifts himself from you. You lament the loss of his warmth, but you know it’s not for long. He’s only moved to finagle your body so you’re faced up and he’s straddling you flush. He wants to see your face and greet you with some semblance of an ensuring glance. “Our friends are going to out-live us,” he admits, settling himself until he’s blanketing your body with his own—laying out across you in the way that makes you feel secure and safe. “Everyone will, probably. Of all involved, we’re the ones who should already be dead. What we have now is actually a gift. What happens after this runs out doesn’t matter to me yet. I’m not in a damn hurry to get there.” 

He presses the back of his bruised hand to your face and draws it down your cheek. His fingers are cool and they feel good against your warm cheek. This subtle gesture speaks volumes from Kanda and it does reassure you. The future is uncertain and you’re not going to live looking toward it. Being right here means more to you. You’re both still in considerably good health—you walk and eat right—and there’s still a lot left in you both. 

A wet tongue laps at your neck and you squirm a bit, swatting at him as he breaks his silly actions to speak again. “Besides, we’re not too old if we can still get it up, you know. I think we’re doing fine on that front. If we both lose interest completely, then we should start worrying.” 

You withdraw a breath and stare up at the shadows dancing on the ceiling—letting a moment slip by languidly. “…You are the captain of ruining moods, Kanda.” 

“A ship I sail proudly.”


	11. Chapter 11

“Kanda, what are you doing to your wrists?” You ask, rudely taking one of his hands and lifting it to better analyze the spots of bruises that pepper the skin around the joint. You know he’s a lot less graceful now, but he can’t possibly be smacking himself into things that often, to have this many blemishes. “You look like I really did lock you in bondage.” 

“It’s because of that watch I wear,” he grunts and pulls his arm back down—shoulder clearly stiff from the way he nearly drags you down with him. He’s never been the type to say please and you’ve learned to never ask permission as a result of his behavior. Taking his hand up had probably disturbed him from his drawing. “I stopped wearing it on one arm and then I ended up with bruises on the other.” 

“Maybe you’re wearing it too tight,” you offer an obvious reason and he taps his pencil against his lip—as if considering your hypothesis. “Perhaps you should stop wearing it?” 

“That is an expensive watch, beansprout. It would be rude not to wear it after it was given to me.” 

You shake your head, because he’s being stubborn for the sake of it. “We know your wrists are weak, you could at least try to help yourself out, Kanda. Komui won’t be offended if you don’t wear it. It’s just Komui.” 

“Is that why you don’t wear yours? Because it’s just Komui? Well, the reasoning behind these gifts ought to be enough to make you slip it on your wrist a time or two, you know. It’s not every day we actually get treated like our relationship is valid.” Kanda has a point and it offsets you for a moment. 

Komui had been thoughtful enough to have these two gorgeously engraved accessories delivered to the both of you, something like three months after the reunion, and they had come with a letter congratulating you both for finding happiness and well wishing you both a long companionship. This was as close to a wedding gift as you could imagine receiving. It still makes you feel good to think about and you have that letter carefully tucked away. Perhaps that’s why you don’t like to wear it. Fear of breaking it overwhelms your desire to parade it. Your names are both carved into each piece and it really feels like a personal item. Kanda is fortunate, in that way, because he’s less likely to break his than you feel you are. You’re not graceful at all. Kanda may have a habit of smacking into things, but he at least catches himself before taking the full brunt of it. 

“I’ll wear it when we go out next, okay? Until then, how about you put yours away for a little while so your wrists clear up. You’re probably wearing it too tight. Not to mention, you’ve been drawing a lot lately and it’s going to end up straining them.” 

“My wrists are fine, beansprout. Stop mothering me. I can function just fine. I can still masturbate with no problems.” 

You had almost turned away from him, but his commentary stops you and you wheel back around to give him the only look you feel you can when he makes such unnecessarily placed comments. “Really? And when was the last time you actually did that Kanda?” 

“Night before last,” he answers swiftly and you weren’t actually expecting that. 

“You…” You have to stop and consider the information he’s feeding you. “Wait. Hold on, you did that at night? Where was I?” 

“Sleeping.” 

“You did that while I was sleeping.” 

“Yes, right next to you. I thought you were going to wake up, but you didn’t so I finished my business and rolled over with you.” 

“…You are really a terrible person.” 

“Sorry,” he bows in a mocking manner and then gives you a very false expression to convey his apologies. “I’ll wake you up next time.” 

You feel a bubbling desire to flick something at him. “That is not what I meant, Kanda and you know it.” 

“Too late, set in stone. I’ll make certain you’re awake for it.” 

“You’re such a pain,” you snort fondly and brush your hand across the back of his head—taking your fingers through his feathered hair. It’s getting even lighter and sometimes you miss the dark locks—but you find him still as attractive as he ever was. “I came to tell you dinner was ready, actually. You were so engrossed with your project that you didn’t notice me calling up for you.” Your walk a bit more around him and snake your arms down his shoulders, leaning close over him—keeping him affectionately pressed to you. “You need to eat.” 

“So do you,” he replies and turns his head back, eyes closed. “You’re warm, beansprout. You need to eat, drink something hot and go lay down.” 

“I will when you do, you know I can’t get to sleep without you.” 

“You’re so needy, Jesus Christ,” he shakes his head a bit and turns in his seat—making you step back a bit. The wheels on his chair roll a bit so he can pull himself closer to you, wrapping his arms around your middle. “I’ll be there in a minute. You’re already catching a bug, don’t make it worse; because I’ll be mad if you give it to me.” 

“Come with me noooow,” you drawl and pull him lightly, drawing a deep breath in the form of a weary yawn. You came up here to drag him down for food and—as usual—managed to divert the discussion until you’d almost forgotten your initial point. Some bit of you wonders if that’s not just distraction; that maybe you’re actually losing memory with time. That’s not a thing you want to think about, though. The idea of losing memories scares you; because memories are what you cherish the most now. “It’s gonna get cold anyway, if you wait. You can finish that when you get back.” 

“Alright, stop being a thorn in my side, I’m coming. I just need to store this so it doesn’t get ruined,” he excuses himself from your body long enough to set his equipment aside, dropping his pencils and chalks into his mixed box of all things unsorted. 

While he’s packing away the more fragile sticks of charcoal, you’re discreetly leaning over his shoulder and peeking at his work in progress. It’s a sketchy mess of lines and patches of cross stitches, but you can easily define the rough details. He’s gotten extraordinarily good at using these dry media and it almost makes you give yourself away—when you itch to bring the page to you for a closer gaze. This is a personal piece, that much you’re aware. Even this many years after, Kanda’s memory is still good enough to recall the fine details of his mentor’s face. Knowing your companion, have no doubts that you won’t see this picture after it’s complete. He’ll burn it in remembrance. 

“Hey, quit staring and let’s go,” he snips and breaks your trance. Your thoughts crumble and you shake yourself until you’re focusing on him again. 

“Took you long enough,” you mutter, feeling a bit flushed now that you’re slowing down. Your main goal in life right now is food and his body close to yours. The rest of the world be damned for all you care at the moment. 


	12. Chapter 12

You’re standing in the kitchen when you hear the loud reverberating sound of something heavy crashing to the hard floor. The startlingly loud noise is immediately followed by dead silence and one quiet grunt. Without a word, you turn and leave the kitchen with as much swiftness as you can—trying to curb the dizziness that has plagued you in the last few days. Kanda told you to be in bed and you probably should have listened, but you’re glad you didn’t; because the sight you walk in on is alarming. This sight isn’t alarming enough for you to worry about Kanda’s safety, but it’s alarming enough to see that he’s slowly losing his ability to carry things—a fact that you’ve not been able to really call him out on. Sure, he’s dropped things; but what you walk into is a mess of all messes. The painting supplies hit the floor and scattered all around him—black paint pouring across the wood. 

Kanda himself is looking up at you with the most disdainful expression plastered on his finely aged face. The tray he carried to bring these paints to the sink is overturned in his lap and it’s very clear that he lost his balance when they tipped. Water is splashed all the way to where you’re standing and you can’t help but shake your head at him. You really hate to tell him you told him so but…

No you actually enjoy it. 

“How are your wrists, Kanda?” You ask, feigning politeness and holding back the thing you actually want to say—directly anyway. “You seem to be strong as an ox still.” 

“Shut up, I just stumbled a bit. Are you going to help me clean up, or are you going to stare at me with those freakish doe eyes and blink at me like a creepy doll?” The snap of his tongue is a pleasant hum in your ears. You like when the fiery side of his personality flares up in these moments where he’s backed in a corner. It makes it easier to bust his balls about it. 

“Stumbled? You managed to stumble and drop paint all over the floor? And black paint too? What a bother,” you accentuate and lean against the door. You’ll help him soon enough, you just want him to feel a little embarrassed for a moment. Then maybe he’ll agree to take it easier. Maybe he’ll even let you get him a paint cart so he doesn’t have to carry anything anymore. You’ve tried to get him to go along with it, but he’s adamant that he’s fine. You have a feeling he could have an arm missing and say everything is okay. Kanda won’t change in that respect, you feel. It’s not a bad trait; but it makes it very difficult to gauge when you should be worried. “But seriously, can you please just go easier?” 

He stays silent, because he knows that he’s wrong this time. There’s no denying that he’s losing strength and the heavy paints coating their nice wooden floors should be evidence enough. Stubborn as he is, Kanda’s not the type to hold on to conviction in the face of absolute fault. When he’s wrong, he’s wrong; and right now, he’s not perfectly okay. 

“You’re going to end up losing all strength in your wrists if you push them too hard. Komui said we can stave it off for a while, but you can’t go around lifting cars and arm wrestling bears.” 

Kanda looks down and pushes the tray off his lap before setting back and just giving up for the moment. He’s already covered in paint so it doesn’t matter if he just sits in it for a bit. He leans against a bended knee and looks up at you. “It wasn’t my wrists this time.” 

“Kanda, come o—.” 

He holds a hand up and you stop talking. For a second there you thought that he was going to argue still, but you know Kanda better than that. Instead, he has a serious look on his face and you feel compelled to listen to him explain what he’s referring to. “It was my elbow. It’s moving up my arm. I can feel it in my shoulder too. It’s a burning sensation. When I pull in the wrong direction, I lose control of my fingers.” 

“…I…didn’t know it was getting this bad,” you say, moving off the doorway and stepping closer to him—ignoring the paint coating the bottom of your shoes. He’s more important than a pair of replaceable boots. “How come you didn’t say anything?” 

“I don’t know,” he admits and lays his head against his knee. The aura of frustration is almost visible and you reach out and press your palm flat against his back—a comforting action that he always seemed to respond well to. “I guess I was hoping to ignore it for as long as I could. It’s hard to get over the fact that my injuries just don’t disappear anymore.”

“Welcome to the rest of our lives, Kanda,” you laugh and kneel closer to him, reaching to pick up a paint brush left in his lap. You smile and turn the bristles of the brush to his cheek without so much as a warning—drawing a big ‘x’ on his face and grinning like a cat about it. “X marks the spot.” 

“…Beansprout, really. Did you really.” Neither statement is a question and he’s staring at you with complete dispassion and his expression isn’t budging a bit. If anyone’s good at it, Kanda is the best at the blank stare and you find it almost comical in nature. He’s just really good at pretending to be as serious as he tries, but really not serious at all. The mark on his face is hardly bothering him by now—with all the paint he’s got washing his clothes and skin from about the chest down. He’s just looking for a reason to give you this face. You think it deserves an ‘x’ on the other cheek. 

“Now you match, dummy,” you smile and turn the paint brush away from him, sliding the handle past his temple and setting it to rest over his ear. “There, you can have that back.” 

“You’re asking for it, really bad.”

“What are you going to do? Flop your arms at me?” You tease, leaning in just a bit closer. You’re not close enough for him to lean forward and bite you, but he looks like he really wants to do just that. “You’ve already been defeated by inanimate objects today, don’t make it worse.” 

You expect him to retort, but you hardly expect his sudden movement, and you hardly expect him to actually raise his hands with the force that he does. Despite the flaring pain he must be feeling in his joints, he still pulls you by your shirt and wrestles you until you’re no longer able to stay kneeling. You lament when your legs touch the floor—because you know the paint will never come out of these pants—but Kanda’s already made you forget your pants. He’s dropped you across his lap and you can’t really think to respond when he’s got his mouth crushing over yours and robbing you of your breath. 

There’s just a moment of protest before you give up. You can’t resist it and you know better than to think you ever could. Your head is swimming because he makes you really feel good despite being old, half broken and having lost most of your youth to hardships you can’t erase. You want to curse him for this pleasant feeling he’s always lighting in you. You hope you give him the same feeling. He’s not an expressive person, but you want to believe this sort of show gives away what he feels. 

You draw in a gasping breath when he releases you and it bubbles with a light peppered laughter. “Kanda, you assclown,” you hiss and grin—feeling loopy. Even though he’s dragged you right into his mess, you can’t help but feel good about it anyway. 

“You started it, idiot,” he announces and draws his finger across your cheek, turning it in something of a circle. It takes your lazy brain several long moments to realize the round motion of his finger is him actually painting on your face. He repeats the soft action on your other cheek, dipping his finger into the wet paint on the floor to make certain your cheeks are as painted as his own. “Now we match.” 

“If we matched, then we’d both have the same marks, you dummy,” you berate and scoff at him when he runs his finger down your nose—knowingly leaving more paint behind. “Stop, you asshat.” 

“No. You can’t make me,” he protests and pokes at your face until you’re pushing him away. You almost find it hilarious how the two of you can be sometimes. If you were on the outside looking in, you might consider the two of you to be really immature. This, however, feels more like maturity than the other way around. “Besides, x’s and o’s go together, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“You’re…” You start but then calm yourself to his words. You hate him when he speaks louder with vague words than if he screamed the blatant ones across the town. “You’re impossible, really.” He’s got you this time and you just shake your head and turn your face into his shoulder. He’s nice and warm. The sound of his heart beating is comforting and you can feel it under your touch when you draw your hand up to his neck. 

“Beansprout?” 

You hear his voice and you just murmur a response. You don’t feel like picking up the paint just yet. Just a few more minutes of chaos and then you can both stand up and clean yourselves off and get this mess put away. He knows you wouldn’t leave him to pick this sort of disaster up by himself—not knowing how his wrists and other joints in his arms seem to be acting up. For just a moment, you’ll be okay with being messy. Age is making you needy, you realize and you don’t care. Kanda hasn’t lost his cool on you for it yet, so you’ll milk it for all its worth. 

“Hey, beansprout?” He repeats and you want to swat at him to shut him up for just a moment. Strangely, though, you don’t have the energy to move and you just grunt at him unpleasantly. “Hey…Allen? Hey, answer me.” 

You don’t know what his problem is, but he sounds concerned. You can see him clearly and you can hear him just fine. Twice now you’ve mumbled back at him but maybe he hasn’t heard you. Maybe he’s going deaf too. Though, you’ve always known Kanda to have perfect hearing. 

The drum of his heart is a little faster too and you’re confused. You’re seriously confused; but when you open your mouth to speak, you realize that you can’t clearly make out any words. Every bit of control you thought you had has drained out of your body and you’re limp in his hold. Why and how you completely lost your strength are mysteries that you can’t compute at the moment, but he’s not as calm as you feel. He’s already moving from where he was, sliding out from under you and dragging you from the floor to the closest surface. 

You want to help him lift you to the couch, but you just breathe slowly—burning up and yet cold at the same time. The clarity is starting to vanish and the world seems to distort. You can still make out the sounds of Kanda’s feet against the hard floor. He’s scrambling across the room and it sounds like he’s knocking things off the table in order to reach for the phone—this specific device given to them in order to contact a particular person. He’s jamming his fingers across the phone to dial the short number to make a direct connection and you can even hear the tone of the phone and the static of the person answering. 

Kanda's voice, however, drowns out any other sounds and it’s the last one that you can comprehend before everything goes silent. “Komui, I need help!”


	13. Chapter 13

There’s a small device in your hand, blurred and generally distorted. It’s flashing a number at you that you can’t seem to recognize for anything. It’s not a formula and it’s not a code that you’re aware of, but it keeps flashing and you can’t make the sound that accompanies be silent. It just continues in your hand, until you’re shaking it and trying to make sense of the complete haze you’re stuck in. 

It’s at the moment that your brain has given you the reprieve of knowing you’re in a dream and not sitting in the middle of a crowded town, whirring with life and filled with people you’ve never seen—doing and dressed in gaudy, brightly colored clothes with unkempt hair and unsavory mannerisms. They’re just walking past you and you watch them. They don’t even see you and you can’t feel them. It’s like you’re dreaming in a parallel where you’re not even allowed to interact with the world you’ve concocted in your mind. In a way, you feel cheated; yet you’re thankful for the knowledge that you’re not actually here. Knowing you’re dreaming often saves you from waking up in cold unsettled sweats. 

Still, the thing in your hand still flashes and it’s loud—yet you can’t hear it at all. It’s not a heavy thing and it makes it much easier to throw the small thing as far from your dream body as possible. The damned thing that wasn’t much bigger than your thumb has you unsettled even more so than the way the sky seems to glow eerily over a town where you’re not even connected. 

You hate dreams like these, because you can’t rouse yourself from sleep and you can’t determine the passage of time. You feel like you’ve been here forever, but you know that dreams are hugely warped and the perception of time is completely lost. You could have fallen into deep sleep for only minutes or this could be weeks. You just don’t know. 

It’s driving you crazy, because this fabrication of your mind lacks the familiarity that you feel you need when you escape from reality. Placing things you know in your subconscious is your natural way to protect yourself from sanity. Usually your dreams are filled with the past events, probable futures, or things you wish you could undo. You frequently dream about  _ her _ . 

The fact that you dream about  _ her _ makes you feel guilty because you love Kanda more than life itself and you knew that when you met her. You knew you could never be her anything and yet you still pretended you could. Perhaps you should feel bad because you’re dreaming about someone else when you have a lover, but you know Kanda would be more concerned about you holding personal guilt over something that was years done and over. You belong with him. 

She had been a sweet girl, though, and she tried so much to make a home for you—but you turned her down in the worst way. No wonder her memory haunts your dreams. Wronging someone like that was a regret you’d live with deep down, even if it didn’t affect you on a daily basis. Sometimes you want to go back and really beg for her forgiveness; but you get the impression that you’re the only one who still really holds you accountable. 

Despite this, she’s not here—not in this dream. Kanda’s not here either. That unsettles you even more and you look around, suddenly hyper aware. Kanda’s almost always at least present in your dreams—even if just in reference. One time, you remember seeing a picture of him on a desk while you were having a dream about something involving octopus and Timcanpy having legs. You still don’t know what that was about, but you remember Kanda’s picture [and an apparent desk]. 

You stand, feeling transparent as you stumble through the street that slowly seems to be dissolving. The crowd of people has thinned significantly leaving you with nothing but empty sidewalk slicked with a layer of rain that you somehow missed before. When had it rained? When had everything changed? That was the nature of your dreams often, but it never seemed so subtle. You always seem to notice changes, where you’ve noticed none of these until the change was already set. 

The sound of the busy city is gone too, now. You’ve only noticed this because you hear only the clicks of shoes against the sidewalk. The noise seems to be moving away and you run toward it. You can see the footprints as if they’re glowing and your jogging becomes a sprint. Even so, you can’t catch up and you feel like you’re hot and out of breath. The spread of your feet has to be wider than that of the figure walking away. The timing between each click of those shoes is much shorter than your long stride and you can’t understand why you can’t catch up. 

Then the sound vanishes entirely. A small bubbling fury rises before deflating. You can’t get mad at a dream when you have no idea what you were chasing to begin with. Instead, you just begin to wander out of the city, the snow crunching beneath your feet. 

…Snow? 

One hand extends and fingers open to the fleck of ice that drops from the sky until you almost can feel the chill in your bones. You don’t know when the snow started, just like you don’t know when the rain did. 

The rain is completely gone and you wonder where the transition was. Did you pass the point of freezing when you were running after the person with no face or name? Why were you running after someone you didn’t know anyway? Maybe you were absently hoping it was Kanda. You do that a lot. Not absently run after people hoping they’re Kanda; but you think about him so much that no matter what the context is, it always revolves around him. 

The lack of him in this world is startling you until you’re fabricating the frigid environment and you wonder absently if this is what he felt when you left him. It pains you to think about the fact that you walked out without even stopping to consider if your actions were right or not. It pains you that your dreams are still taking you in these directions. You hate that you’re thinking of logical things while you’re supposed to be imagining giraffes swimming or some other dumb thing. 

Instead, you’ve given up and you’re dropped on your knees in snow—staring up at a sky that’s a lot darker than you remember. Time is blurring together and you want to cry when you realize what this means. This metaphor your cruel mind came up with as your heart pounding until you can hear it. You close your eyes and let the drops crystallize on your face without remorse. There is no one in this dream world that’s real but you anyway. Who is going to see your fears now? 

There’s pressure on your face and you’re sure it’s the strength of the wind—wind that feels like needles against your skin, even though you’re probably not even cold back where your real body lies. This moment you take to slow down, encourages you to try and recall what brought you here. You were with him and then you were here. You were here holding a device that was beeping at you. 

You still hear it, actually. 

You don’t understand that, because you ran far away from wherever you threw it. The beeping is consistent, but hiccups from time to time when your heart rate changes. When you’re breathing heavily after you hold your breath and try to pinpoint the sound. 

Silver eyes open and you recognize it with a groggy groan—blinking the haze out of your vision as much as you possibly can. It’s a heart monitor. That’s your heart rate. That’s the beeping. The incessant noise isn’t a damned little lighter sized contraption, it’s a heart monitor. 

It’s also not cold anymore, when you open your eyes and the sky is nowhere to be seen in your immediate vision. In fact, there’s the tall rise of your ceiling above you. The passage from dreaming to awake was as abrupt—yet untelling—as the dream. You almost want to pinch yourself to make sure you are awake. However, the sharp prick against your arm saves you the trouble. 

“Ngh,” you grunt and you move, lolling your head to the side. 

“Oh good, you’re finally awake,” you hear and you recognize the voice after a long and arduous moment of thinking as hard as possible. “I was worried. Any longer and you might have been considered comatose.” 

The way the words smoothly roll off the man’s tongue leaves you with an easily pictured visage to go with the sounds. The Chinese man doesn’t even have to be in your immediate sight, because you know his face well enough. Komui is also the only one to logically be at your side when you’re very obviously hooked up to machines that you’re certain most of the world isn’t privy to. Komui has become a fine doctor since his departure from the Black Order’s main staff and you’re thankful for it. He’s the only one you trust with you or Kanda. 

“Where am I,” you question, voice cracking as it springs back to life—obviously unused in a while. So you have been asleep for a considerable amount of time. Maybe that’s why the dream felt like you were sitting in a purgatory. Maybe you were comatose after all. 

“You’re in your home,” Komui explains and moves within your sight, performing the basic vital checks as you come back to alertness. He’s pleased to see you awake, you can tell. “Kanda’s been hovering so much, I don’t think I could have moved you out of here if I wanted to. I’m certain I would have had to drag the hospital here before I could take you there.” He sits back and fixes his stethoscope to his ears and signals your silence for a few moments so he can listen for the possible crackles or muffles with every intake of breath. He’s quick and you’re thankful, because you’re too easily chilled at the moment and his hands and that stethoscope feel like ice to you. The man sits back and reaches for a small clipboard where you can see scribbles on papers—his notes. “You’re fortunate that I take house calls, Mr. Walker,” he smiles. 

“What would I ever do without you,” you murmur back at him lightly. Your eyes dart around the room after his mention of Kanda and you’re afraid you’re just not very good at being discreet, because he notices. 

“He’s cleaning up and Lenalee is forcing food down his throat, he’ll be back momentarily,” the doctor assures, setting down the clipboard after a few short, messy scribbles. “You’ve been unconscious for a week now.” 

“A week? Really?” This confuses you a lot more than it should. How you could have gone from feeling fine to unconsciousness, you can’t really understand. Then again, you weren’t really  _ fine _ . 

For a while you’ve been having dizzy flashes and you’ve felt like you’ve had the onset of a fever. You didn’t think that was a significant thing though—not until now. Now you’re in a bed, hooked up to machines and you understand that you really should have mentioned something. You’re sure Kanda would breathe fire on you if he knew that you could have prevented whatever it was that brought you down this far. 

“You’ve caught a fairly nasty infection and I’m trying to clear it out of you, but your body’s immune system is actually somewhat weak at this point. You’re not going to be able to fight it off for a while at this rate. So, I want to keep you bed ridden until I feel you’re well enough.” Komui settles forward and rests his head on the backs of his hands—looking down at the edge of your bed. “I’m so very sorry, Allen. This is because of the sacrifices you kids made on behalf of the rest of us. You’re suffering for the sake of others…some who don’t even appreciate it.” 

You’re quiet for a moment, thinking about the anguish you’ve had trust upon you from all the years you had to fight for something that wasn’t even your fault. You should hate everything and everyone, but you just don’t. “It’s okay, Komui. I’ve not lived a long life, but I’m living a good one. Besides, you said I’ll be fine if I just rest right?” 

“That’s the best hope,” he admits, “there’s still a possibility that your immune system won’t be able to keep up. I’ve given you blood infusions and I’ve flushed your system of what impurities I can so we can focus attention on this infection. The rest is up to if your body can keep up.” 

An infection has you down like this and you almost find it amusing. Once upon a time, you had almost been crunched in every which way—with broken bones, lacerations and even a gouged out eye—and yet now an infection has brought you to a point where you feel like you’re dying. Before you can even express a faint snort of irony, you see movement from your side. 

“Beansprout?” 

You turn your head and you smile at him faintly. You feel much better now that he’s in your sight. It reminds you of how cold your dream felt with him absent. “Yeah, I’m awake. Sorry…I guess I needed a nap.” 

Kanda runs his hand over his face and exhales like he’s breathing a frustrated sigh of relief—a conflicting expression that you’re certain only he can pull off and make completely understandable. “I’m glad you got your beauty sleep then…” He clips his facetious tone and turns his eyes down, not looking at you. He can’t seem to keep the mask he was trying. There’s an uneasiness in him that you want to wash away, but can’t because he’s too far away. “I’m sorry; I did this to you, beansprout.” 

“What are you talking about, Kanda. It wasn’t you,” you shake your head. “It’s something I think I had for a while, it just wasn’t that bad and—.”

“No…I mean I gave you that infection.”


	14. Chapter 14

Kanda’s sitting in the chair by the door, leaned forward and looking down at his folded hands like he’s really done something wrong. You’re still confused—a bit disoriented from being asleep for so long. What you do know is that you’re sick and it’s an infection that your lover claims he gave you. Initially, your heart rate bounced to the point where Komui had to stop Kanda from making too much of a fuss just yet and give you time to calm down. This is how you ended up in the quiet room with Komui making another injection into your arm. No one’s speaking and your heart monitor is back to the steady bleating that it had maintained before Kanda decided to drop a possible bombshell on you. 

In the half-hour or so that you’ve all been quiet, you’ve had time to think about this and you’ve determined that Kanda can’t have given you anything in the lines of an STD. Maybe once you might have believed that, but Kanda’s blood would have killed anything from that time and for the last sixteen years you’ve been monogamous with each other as far as you know. You don’t think Kanda would be willing to take another partner even if you were okay with the concept. He’s too devoted to you now that he has you back after your episode. So what? What did he mean in such a way that has him so unsettled? 

You fiddle with the fabric over you and wish you had the other arm moveable to fidget. The other arm, however, is being held by Komui as he jams more needles into your arms. Needles never bothered you, but you were woken by the sharp prick of one and you’ve been poked twice again since then. You’re about sick of them at this point. All you can do is lean your head back and exhale, hoping someone will explain to you what’s going on and why Kanda looks like you have a death sentence on you. 

“There,” Komui speaks first, withdrawing the needle from your arm and taking care to cover and leave a small bandage over it. “That should be good until tomorrow. This seems to be improving your health if you’re awake, no?” 

Your eyes meet Komui’s, and you know he’s trying really hard to make this scene as light as possible, but it’s not helping that there’s a big mystery under all of it. “I guess so…are we going to talk about what Kanda meant?” You bite the bullet and initiate the conversation without any hesitation. Komui’s voice encouraged you to use your own. 

“Yes, well, I wish he’d waited before coming in here and panicking on you,” the man almost whistles with how casual his statement is. He’s packing some things away and making certain that all needles and accompanying supplies are safely stored away. “Kanda’s concern for you is quite something though, if he’s taking this so hard.” 

“Komui…” Kanda’s voice is low and bordering on threatening. It reminds you of how Kanda used to be back then—when he was still in his prime and strikingly frightening. 

“I jest,” the doctor holds his arms up in defense of himself. “But really, Kanda’s not entirely wrong. The infection you have was given to you by him. Fortunately, it’s a bacteria and we’re working on an antibacterial for it. It’s a bit tricky, though, because it’s not something we’re really familiar with.” 

“What do you mean not familiar with?” 

“Well,” he pauses and moves in his chair to be closer to you so you don’t have to crane your neck too much. “Originally, I thought it was a form of pneumonia, but it’s mutated into something else and the lab techs seem to think it’s because of Kanda’s blood. Whatever it is, it’s been cultured in his blood and passed to you and you’re feeling the effects of it.” 

Your eyes drift over to Kanda and his drift away. It’s clear why he feels guilty. Even though Kanda’s blood doesn’t heal in quite the same way it did before, he’s still able to stave off effects of most sicknesses unless they’re extreme. His blood being different would make him an evolution breeding ground for bacteria, you imagine. “That’s why he’s making those faces?” You ask and Kanda’s face twitches. You can always pick out the words to really mess with him and you know how to draw him out of whatever attitude he’s in. 

“I’m concerned for you, moron,” he snaps and you smile despite it. He feels bad and you really do understand him for that. You feel guilty for a lot of things too and you can’t judge him for it. 

“I know, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make it sound like you aren’t. You just scared the shit out of me coming in here and saying you gave me something.” 

“But I technically did.” 

“That’s not the first thing a person is going to think when you say it like that, you know,” you point out and reach out for him to move closer to you. You want him by you, even if he’s giving you sicknesses. “This is curable right? So what’s the problem?” 

Kanda doesn’t say anything and now you really are concerned. He doesn’t respond to your motion and your arm drops back on the bed. That’s uncomfortable and you don’t know how to express that without looking like a child needing a parent. You need him close and he’s closed himself off suddenly because you got a little sick. People get sick. He knows that; and you’ll get better. You think you’d feel a lot better right now with him closer too. 

“The problem, Allen,” Komui breaks between you and you realize he’s being more serious than before, “is that Kanda’s body is mutating sicknesses. He’s fighting it off, but he’s also giving it to you in the process. This means two things, you’re at risk of catching something you can’t fight off…and his blood is attacking itself to kill the possible infections that could harm him. I can treat you both and you’ll be fine, but for as long as this has gone on judging from samples of blood from both of you…It’s a wonder either of you are even alive.” 

“…Oh,” you mouth the sound and you can see why Kanda’s a bit upset. Neither of you have been promised long lives and this development could possibly have cut that down even more. “What are you trying to say in terms of prognosis, Komui?” 

“If I get you both on proper medications and diets, then two years at most, I’d say. That might be being generous.”


	15. Chapter 15

“Kanda,” you repeat for what seems like the hundredth time—though you know it’s only like the fourth time you’ve tried to desperately get his attention. He’s sitting next to your bed, flipping through a book that you know he’s not reading. He probably doesn’t know that you woke up and he’s probably so tuned out from what’s around him that he hasn’t even thought to look up. He’s been like this since your conference with Komui days prior. This is concerning to you because he’s usually a lot more sturdy than this. He’s not afraid of death, but this approximation of time seems to have shaken him a bit. “Kanda!” 

He jumps and darts his eyes around before shaking his head and looking over to the source of the sound. His faded eyes are seeking you out frantically and you know there’s something wrong in his head. 

“What’s wrong? Why are you spacing out like this?” Perhaps it was too direct, but you and your partner haven’t been very good in the art of subtlety. This leaves you both with straightforwardness that you think you need. “You haven’t said much to me in a few days. Please don’t shut me out.” 

“I…” He grabs for words, but they seem to fall off his tongue and he licks his lips as if he might find them there. “Well…” He struggles to make something that even remotely sounds sensible and he’s not succeeding all too well. “Augh,” he finally just grunts and slouches forward, dropping his head into the mattress by your arm—his face turned just enough that he can speak and you can hear the muffled sounds. “I may as well have given you an STD,” he speaks, as if it hurts just to admit. 

If you’re honest, he’s probably right. The bacteria that warped and evolved in his unusual blood were a leading cause to the decline in your health. However, this isn’t something that Kanda actively did. Kanda’s blood isn’t normal and you both have long since been aware of that. To you, it’s not surprising that this sort of thing happened in him. He’s probably not all that surprised either. You think this is more along the lines of grief on his part. He doesn’t want to lose you any more than you want to lose him. Two years isn’t long and you both thought you had a  _ little _ more time than  _ that _ . 

“Kanda,” you speak clearly to draw his eyes back up. Your hand moves and crawls along the white sheets until your fingers brush his cheek. “It’s not something either of us could have really planned for. It’s unfortunate, because we couldn’t really know. I didn’t really get sick until now. Just sniffles and the usual cold…you don’t really get sick at all, save for the bruises and joint stiffness. But as far as immune system, we’ve both dodged major bullets until now. Even then, your immune system is keeping you healthy enough. You can just nurse me until I die.” 

You flinch when he leans back and flicks an arm up to your face—pinching your cheek until you yelp a bit. “Don’t you dare say that,” he whispers harshly as if he’s really afraid you’ll leave him. 

Sometimes you forget just what your absence once did to him. You don’t mean to be callous, really. You’ve been so happy with him for so long that you fail to remember that you weren’t always happy old bastards walking together with one foot from each of you in the grave. “I’m sorry, I didn’t really mean it like that. I…I guess I don’t really want to think about later. If we do that, then we lose today and I feel better already. Once I’m healthy and once Komui’s done shoving every medicine they can fabricate in the labs into us, then we can go back to the way it was.” 

“I don’t know if I should really be too close to you, beansprout. If I managed to infect you once, it’s possible it could happen again with something stronger.” 

“That’s assuming you’re able to catch something from the outside to let settle and multiply in you. Besides, didn’t Komui say he was going to try and balance your system? Wouldn’t that slow infections?” 

“Komui can only do so much, you know. It’s amazing we even have this much technology. God help us if this sort of shit got out to the general public. I suppose this is our payment for being their dogs for so long,” Kanda laments and leans back against the bed—moving up closer until his head is pressed over your hand. He needs closeness like you do, but he’s afraid of how close he can get; you can feel it in his body language. 

“If we weren’t their dogs, then we might have never met in the first place.” 

“If we weren’t, then I wouldn’t be alive in the first place."

You tilt your head down to him, “then I can think of at least one reason why it was all worth it.” His expression softens a bit, even though you can still feel his tension. 

“You realize what this means for us, right?” He asks and you wait for him to continue so you can really get what he means. “We’re both going to break down for the next however long we actually have, until we’re too useless to even take care of each other. We’re going to decline from here…With your immune system weak and…” 

“Idiot,” you snap and stroke under his eye with your thumb. “We were going to do all that anyway. It’s just a bit sooner than expected. But really, we’re lucky. We shouldn’t be alive as it is. Maybe God’s forgiving us for our blasphemy in strange ways.” 

“Yeah,” Kanda murmurs and closes his eye against the pad of your thumb, “you’re definitely not going to the same place I am when we kick the bucket.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“That means I won’t need a heater.” 

“You’re so dramatic,” you snort and settle more into the bed, inch over a bit before melting into the mattress like it’s the most comfortable thing. “Kanda, come up here,” you ask and pull him until he’s got no choice but to comply. You can aggravate him to do anything, you believe. “I don’t care if you infect me. We got a couple of years for me to contract all of your home-grown STDs, at least let me enjoy your presence while I do it.” 

He doesn’t have words to give you, because he’s a bit distraught and conflicted. You don’t want to die of an infection and you know that’s a possibility with what he’s capable of passing to you; but you really want to believe the best and if the worst happens, at least you will have lived your remaining time to the fullest. This time, he complies with your wish and he struggles to lift himself so that he can slide into your bed with you. Komui will probably have a fit, but you don’t care. The doctor can shove all his medicines in you in the morning and you’ll deal with it then. For the time being, you just want to sleep beside the person you plan to fade out with. 

The cool body slides in next to you and you wish you could get him under the covers with you too; but it’s clear that he had enough of a time just moving from where he was. His joints must be hurting him again, you assume—taking note of the dark blotches at his wrists and elbows. If you crane your neck, you’re sure you’d see it at his ankles too. It makes sense if he does have a form of anemia, then.

“We’re going to get better, okay?” You try to reassure, but you know he’s a lot less positive than you are at the moment. 

“No we won't,” he twists himself until he can fit closer to you, framing your side and making you feel safe for the first time in a while. Not that you weren’t safe, but now you feel at ease. “I’ll be willing to pretend we will though,” he amends and you wrap your one arm around his shoulders, bringing his face into the crook of your neck. 

“Sounds good to me.” 


	16. Chapter 16

The sun shines in through the window just moments after the sound of fabric being drawn across the rod hits your ears—processing in your half-sleeping brain. You know that it’s daylight, but you’re not really one with the day yet. You’ve been sleeping most of the previous two weeks and you really have learned to lament the light when it happens to be present. The groggy feeling that’s settled in your body seems to be a constant now and you just want it to clear up already. Despite the hopefully words, you realize that getting back to a healthy state may not be as possible as you hoped. Even so, you try to keep positive and think about when you and Kanda can just hole yourselves up in your house—after sanitizing the hell out of it. 

“Ngh,” you grumble and try to roll in your bed, but find it harder when you’re as damn stiff as you are. You haven’t done much in the way of moving and you almost feel like you’re out of touch with how to actually use your body. At least you move more than you did in the beginning. Now you see yourself out of bed a couple times a day, usually with Kanda’s aid. 

“Good afternoon, sunshine,” a polite, yet cheerful, voice announces and you blink to clear your vision a little more. You know who it is, because there are some voices so distinct they may as well have a name attached to the sound alone. It’s Lenalee and when she comes into your vision, you see the soft light bouncing off her soft-round cheek. The color of the light, and the way it pours over her so fully, tell you that it’s late afternoon and you’ve probably slept all through the last day into today. Though, you’re unsure of why she’s even here. 

“Hi...” You mumble softly and turn your head away from her—thinking about the fact that you’re sick and wondering if she can catch anything that Kanda passed to you. If it’s a bacterial infection, you’re led to believe that it could be…but just how? Komui hasn’t shown any signs of being sick and you’re fairly certain he hasn’t made any extreme attempts to quarantine you. “What are you doing here?”

“My brother,” she begins her explanation, taking a seat in the chair by you, “he asked me to take a trip and bring back some medicine from out of town, so I’m bringing it here. He says he’ll be back from the lab some time later. We won’t bother you for too long, I promise. I just wanted to see you.” She looks down at her hands—fidgeting with them in her lap. The gentle smile is a mask for the hurt she must be feeling in her heart, you realize. She’s very protective of those close to her and if she spoke to her brother, then you know she’s aware of the limit you and Kanda are under. She’s aware that she and her husband—and most of your comrades who are left—will live so much longer than you and your partner will. “I…”

“It’s okay, you know,” you say, before she can speak another word. You know the survivor’s guilt from anywhere. It was something you felt at one point and you now know that it’s never the survivor’s fault. The ones who are lost aren’t lost in vain. It’s just a cycle of life that can’t be stopped. You’ve grown perfectly accustomed to that. “To be honest,” you inhale and settle yourself up a little. “I’m still a little drowsy, so if I slur, I’m completely sorry.” 

“No…No I understand. I didn’t mean to wake you…well, okay, yes I did…But I know you also need to take your medicines.” She’s a little on edge and you can’t blame her. This must feel like talking to a terminally ill person, even though you’re technically not terminally ill from any disease—but rather, the fact that your body can’t defend itself like it should before. Like any complex machine, you’re just getting rusty and your gears are slowing and grinding. Eventually, you’ll stop. That’s okay, though, because at least you’re not a lonely gear. 

“I’m sorry you have to see me like this,” you apologize, but it’s not a lamenting apology. You have an attempted chipper tone and you’re feeling a lot more positive about this than you probably should considering the state of your being. “I’m sure I look like a mess. I haven’t brushed my hair in weeks…well, not personally. I’m sure Kanda’s done it while I was sleeping. He’s always in here…except now…” You look around, noting the distinct absence of your life partner. “Where is he, actually?” 

“He’s still downstairs with Lavi.”

“…Willingly?” 

“It looked like he was having a hard time standing up, so I told him to just stay in the kitchen and Lavi could try some acupuncture on him to see if that did anything.” 

“Ah, he’s been having problems with his knees and ankles. He says his legs are swollen. Komui’s medicine isn’t perfect after all,” you shake your head, but you know his medicine has kept Kanda’s blood from churning out some super bacteria from the ones he’s already defended himself against. You’re not entirely sure how Komui’s team can even do any of this, but you won’t question it for the sake of their assistance. Science is a complex and terrifying thing to you sometimes. 

“Adverse reaction, I take it?” 

“That’s what it looks like. He’s been more sluggish, but he’s somewhat mobile, so that’s good. It means he can be around me and won’t kill me in the process. Which I admit, I selfishly like,” you chuckle a bit and adjust yourself to open your shirt. The room feels warm and you need to cool air on your skin. It’s frigid outside, despite the sunlight pouring in. This kind of weather doesn’t happen too often, and you know you should appreciate the sun when it does shine—but you really kind of wish it was overcast today. You sleep much better when it is and the more you sleep, the faster you will get better. 

Now you’re wide awake though. You’ve already reached a stage of alertness that will prevent you from falling back asleep too easily. You suppose it’s only fair if you’re going to reacquaint yourself with Lenalee for a little bit. She’s handing you a glass of water and you’re happy to take it. You feel like you need to be watered yourself, but you know that’s only because your body is desperately trying to fend off the invader that dropped you as low as you were. 

“I’m glad you’re both relatively alive though,” she mutters and you can almost see the twitch of guilt on her face as she speaks the last syllable. She doesn’t want you two to leave her without at least a word from each of you. This woman is still the young girl you knew and you’re glad time hasn’t changed her good heart. “I mean…I’m sorry you’re both in such poor health, but I…I really don’t know how I could…stand to think that I might not have seen you before…” 

“I know, you don’t have to feel bad for it,” you assure her, resting the palm of your hand against her arm and giving a gentle rub to remind her that you’re still very real for the moment. You’re not dead yet and you still have time to work on that. Kanda too. “I’m glad you love us enough to come see us when I know you must be busy with your boys.” 

“They’re big kids, they can handle a few nights without us.” Her short hair crowds her face and bounces with the way her infectious chuckles leaves tremors in her form. She’s torn between relief and despair, it’s not hard to see this. You’re dense sometimes, but over the years, you’ve learned how to see subtleties that you may not have seen before. You can thank Kanda for that one, because he communicates by his actions more than his words and if you hadn’t learned to understand them, then you don’t know how you’d be as inseparable as you are.

At the same time, you know your behaviors have rubbed off on him and he does speak to you more than he used to. You’ve met in the middle and you feel like it’s a perfect union of who you are as people. You’re sure Lenalee can see this and you’re sure that’s why she’s at least happy to see that you’re not too destroyed by this time limit. This woman knows that you’re not alone and you’re happy for what little you have left. 

“If you need anything, Allen, please let us know. Lavi and I will be here any time and I promise we’ll do our best to see that you’re both comfortable.” 

“We’re fine as long as we’re together. We’ve already discussed this. We’ve written up a joint will, as well.” You suddenly remember that you have such a document and you’re actually finding her presence convenient at this moment. You’ve been meaning to have it mailed to them, but now you don’t have to bother with that. She can take it with her when she goes. “Kanda has it in a folder downstairs, you’ll have to ask him for it, but when we both finally do pass on, we want to leave everything we do have to you guys and your kids. It may not be much, but this house could be a good home at least for your eldest boy. If nothing else, you can use it as a storage unit.” 

“A…Allen,” she croaks a bit and you realize you’re being too callous about your impending death. That was not the intention, but you’ve been thinking about it for many weeks and you’ve lost the fear you may have once had in dying. You don’t mean to make the tears brim her eyes, but you’ve done so and you feel sheepish for it. 

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking…” You whisper and hope she’s not too offset by your apology. This is a delicate conversation in a way and you’ve missed that point until now. This may all be old news to you, but this is new for her. “Lenalee…” 

“No…” She shakes her head and looks down at her lap, trying not to make it obvious that she’s already drawing back sniffles. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be crying if you’re not unsettled by this…I just…I haven’t even been a very good friend in these recent years and I’m very sorry. I wanted you two to be happy for much longer than what my brother told me.” You predicted that she wouldn’t be able to contain it and you were right. Her lovely dark eyes close and the tears spill out across her hands. “I…It’s not fair. You both deserve so much more than this. I was so happy for you and then…” 

“Life’s not fair, right? Well, I think it’s been pretty fair for us to this point. We got as far as happily ever after. That’s more than most people did. You love Lavi, right?” 

She stops and catches her breath and brushes the sob out of her enough to meet you eye to eye. The flow of tears hasn’t quite stopped, but it’s slowed enough for her to compose herself a little more than before. “Yes, I do…” 

“Enough to die for him?” 

“…Yes.” 

“Then you can understand where I am. I love Kanda enough to die for him, but also enough to die  _ with  _ him. That’s where we’re at. We don’t really want to spend time thinking about what we’re missing, but what we have.” 

Her body slumps back a bit and she looks up at the ceiling as if she’s not sure how to respond. She probably doesn’t have a clue. “You’re always such an optimist, Allen. The best part of you that I’m glad never faded. Do you have any requests at the end of all of this?” 

“Yeah, I don’t want to be buried.” 

“No?”

“No. I know that a lot of our members are happy they have that chance now that we’re not stuck under the strict rules…but I’d rather be burned. I’d rather have my ashes spread across the same place we tribute Cross. But…I’d rather you waited until you can send us off together. Kanda may think it’s a dumb gesture, but when a handful of ashes are all we have left, at least we can float on the wind hand in hand.” 

“Oh Allen…” She covers her mouth as her words come out sounding like she bit her tongue. You can’t imagine just how torn she must be feeling with how calm your words are. You’ve already submitted yourself to the inevitable. You don’t think you can cry for your shortened life, but you know she’ll cry for you. She drops forward until her head is pressed to the pristine sheets of your bed. Try as she might, the quivering of her shoulders gives her away for how hard she’s struggling not to sob her heart out. She loves you and Kanda very much and she’s going to lose you both sooner than she’d like. “I’m so sorry, Allen…You deserve so much more.” She sniffles, stopping to breathe and make words that sound congested. 

You just rest your hand on her back and rub in slow, comforting circles. Even if she’s apologizing, you feel the need to thank her—for showing you how much she loves you. You don’t though. There is no point in speaking when you think she knows how much you care in return. Though the four of you haven’t been as close as you once were, it’s still very much a friendship that’s closer than any blood. 

“I have everything I want, right now. Besides, when Kanda and I do depart…well, there’s two of you and two of us. One for each of us to haunt. Let’s just hope Lavi doesn’t get Kanda…” 

The snort she makes at your side is the most inappropriate thing—matched by your most badly chosen comment—but you can’t help but find it to be a beautifully joyous sound.


	17. Chapter 17

Your body jerks in reaction to a sudden sharp break in the silence that your mind is used to. The loud clattering of metal makes your eyes flutter open until you’re confused and shutting your eyes again at the invasion of light. The groan that slips past your lips isn’t intentional, but it gives you away for being awake. Then again, you’d have to be in a coma not to have heard that. It was very close to you, you know that much. 

“Sorry,” a dull whisper comes after a moment of sitting in the after shock of the crashing dishes—that you’ve finally spotted traces off in the corner of your vision. “I thought I could make it all the way.” 

The voice is undeniably Kanda’s and he’s not skirting around the fact that he woke you from a dead sleep. He’s apologetic though and it’s surprising to hear him actually voice it. Though, you’re not sorry what he’s apologizing more for—dropping half the contents of a tray, or being partially to blame for why you’re still in bed a month after your collapse. “It’s fine. I guess I probably needed to be awake for a little bit anyway.” 

Your partner seems to have given up on the contents of the tray that crashed to the floor, in favor of sitting by your bed on the side where the chair is closest to you. Normally, he’s sleeping on the other side of the bed with you—against Komui’s desires, but you do it anyway. Times like these, Kanda makes his way downstairs to bring up water and what food you think you can choke down. Lately, you feel like you can’t eat anything and you know that’s not a good sign; especially when you’re supposed to be getting better. But you feel just a little worse than you seem to remember feeling. You don’t understand it, but you hold on to the hope of recovering enough that you and he can function properly. 

“I did bring water and you need to take your medicine. I’ll let you sleep after, but you should probably try to nibble something.” He’s glancing out the window and you understand why. It’s hard for him to really speak so directly to you with the guilt you know he’s struggling with. 

“I’m not sleeping until you come back to bed.” 

“Beansprout…” He turns his gaze on you and you refuse to give any. You know that you’ve been spending just about every moment with him and he’s probably sick of you by now; but you really feel like you need every moment. Even if you’re both sleeping, there’s a deep comfort your body feels and it’s almost like you feel better just with him there. Without him, the bed is cold and lonely. Not to mention, you really enjoy the long evenings when you’re both awake and talking about nothing and everything in voices just above whispers. Those moments make you feel like the two of you are in a secret world and everyone else isn’t invited. 

“Come on, Kanda. If I’m going to be miserable, at least let me make you miserable with me. I’m already sick. You’re immunized, so you’re not going to catch it back and you’re not giving me new things. Stop worrying about it.” 

“I’m not worrying about i—.”

“Yes you are; but look, I’ll be much better with you close. If I feel like I’m getting sicker, then I’ll talk to Komui. I haven’t lost consciousness, so that’s an improvement all by itself. Besides, it would be incredibly rude of you to deny me every chance to grope you that I can get.” 

His expression flashes like lightning in how quick the worry drains off his face—filled with a disdainful scolding look. “So that was intentional…” 

“No?” You whistle faintly and pull the blanket up higher, hiding your grin. It feels nice to smile again—even if you still feel dizzy and weak. You love snuggling up to him and sometimes you can’t help where your hands wander either. These small things remind you that he’s yours. It really makes you think too. This man hated you so much when you first met him and now he’s the other half of you. If someone told your past selves that, they’d probably vomit on the spot. 

“You’re rotten to the core, beansprout,” he shakes his head a bit and settles himself closer so he can brush the long locks from your face. You blink lazily and keep your focus on him. His fingers blend into your hair and you feel him massaging at your scalp in the way that has your eyes drooping a bit and turning your head. This is where your attempted focus is always lost. The image of him in your eyes has to be replaced with the one in your mind, because you can’t keep your eyes open. “That’s fine though, you can’t help being so attracted to this.” 

You have a snappy retort on your tongue, but your damnable partner has you murmuring quietly—brushing your hair back with his fingers and grazing his nails against your scalp. Neither of you are sure when you figured out that this was so calming for you, but you’re glad you did. It has the same calming affect for you that it has for Kanda when he sleeps with his head against your bare chest. Truthfully, that’s one of your favorite ways to sleep anyway. He likes the sound of your heartbeat and you like his warm body over yours. These thoughts and the way he’s drawing all the comfortably pleasing sensation from you make you really want to just curl back up with him and sleep again. 

“Come back to bed, Kanda,” you mutter and move a hand to rest across the front of his chest, pawing down and making a weakly pleading motion. 

“Beansprout, you need to eat and take your medicine. I need to clean up a bit and do the same. I’m waiting for Komui to return as well, he should be back sometime late tonight with more test results and he said he’s got a new medicine for you to try.” 

“Am I a lab rat now? I really hope these medicines don’t actually kill me,” you jest, but you do wonder if any of this could have a negative affect on you. That would kill you to think that you lost more time in the attempt to get better. 

“We just have to trust him.” Kanda’s hands slide away from your face and you almost go after them, wanting him to stay in your presence a little longer. “Beansprout, I’ll be right back up. Then we can sleep until it’s your turn to clean up.” 

“I really don’t want to get out of this bed any more today.” 

“You need to; you’ll never get better if you atrophy in this bed. Now, we’ll do that later, for now, eat. I may have dropped half of it, but there’s still plenty here and I know you can try to nibble some of it down.” He grips the arms of the chair and you can see the physical strain it places on him to stand—wobbling a bit until he catches his stride. Seeing him like this is almost heartbreaking, but he’s really trying and refuses to let it bring him down. It’s an admirable trait he’s formed in himself. 

He shuffles back to where he left the half dropped collection and move individual parts to the small table by the bed. He clearly doesn’t trust himself to move the whole thing, but you also know that he doesn’t want to shove it all at you at once. If you’re hungry, you’ll find yourself at the rest of the food—so he starts you moderately. You think the greatest gift, though, is the glass of water he places in your hand. As you bring it to your lips, you feel like you’re being revived. 

“I’ll be back in a bit, okay?” 

You bring the glass back down and poke; picking at things set by you. You give him a weak expression that portrays how much you’d rather be curling yourself up in your blanket with him rolled up with you. “Fiiine,” you drawl and stare down at the edge of your water glass. 

“Hey, don’t make faces,” he assures and stands closer to you to loom over; “I’ll bring you back something sweet if you’re good beansprout.” 

“How does one be a ‘good beansprout’?” 

“You sit there. And vegetate.” 

“…So you want me in a coma.” 

“I said vegetate, not vegetable. Though, it’d be a lot easier feeding you through a tube. Still, don’t sass me. Eat, drink, and take your medicine and then sleep. If you’re already asleep when I come back, I’ll just climb in.” Before you can really retort, he brushes his lips to your face and peppers light kisses by your eye. You hate him so much when he does these things, because he derails your attempts to respond before you even start. “I love you, stupid. Now get better.” 

His words leave him and in the same amount of time, he’s already vanishing from your vision and making his way out into the hall. He’s slick about that and you can’t help but feel inclined to comply with his request. Your head feels light with how your heart flutters. Hearing those words always has such an affect on you—probably because he doesn’t say them too often. Still, you’re elated and you need to lean your head back just to calm the way the world seems to quiver. You’ll just close your eyes for a few minutes.


	18. Chapter 18

There’s a dull drumming sound in your head, but you don’t move. You’re drifting at a place in between consciousness and the delectable haze of your dreams. Your dreams are always strange and sometimes, you just want to stay to see what they’re trying to tell you. You don’t know what to make of them usually and more often, you forget them anyway. Try as you might, you will lose what little you gather from the few extra moments you’re taking; but you’ll soak it in anyway. 

A familiar body sits across from you in the foggy city backdrop. You recognize this city as the place you were in the spotted memories of your last dream. The city is cold—with snow coating every open surface. Well, you assume the temperature is frigid, but you can’t really feel it like if it wasn’t a dream. These are some of the signs that let you know you’re not awake—as well as you forcing yourself back into the dream. You really just want to hear what the person in front of you is saying. You watch his lips move, trying to make sense of any single word, but you can’t. The lit cigarette hanging from his mouth is making his lips harder to read and the smoke is incredibly distracting. 

He himself doesn’t feel like he belongs in this place. The vibrant colors that adorn him are enough to make him almost seem surreal—living parallel and you’re not sure how that really works in a dream. It’s almost like a cut out figure being taped on an old painting. He’s somehow different in composition and maybe that’s why you can’t hear him. Yet, he can see you. You know he can see you because he responds to your expressions and he reaches out to touch your arm. 

When you move your arm to do the same your fingers slip through his shoulder and he’s simply beyond your grasp. His touch can be felt; his touch depresses the fabrics of your shirt and that’s how you know he’s a physical presence. When you initiate, however, he’s not real anymore and you don’t comprehend what it means. 

Your mind is cruel to have you dreaming of this man as if he’s alive, anyway. Though, his memory doesn’t hurt the way it did once and actually, it’s nice to see him again—even if just in a soundless dream where you feel sanctioned off from him. You just want to know what he’s telling you. What is he saying…? This man has never wasted his words when it mattered and somehow you feel like his words here are really something that you need to hear. The silence is all you get… 

…Except for that drumming in your head—some steady pounding against something that’s blocking out everything else. Frustration boils up in your chest and you want to scream at it to stop while he’s still talking, waving a hand animatedly and making some inference to something that you know you should get—just by the way he casts that shrewd smirk at you. 

Why is he giving you that look and what is it that you supposed to say in reaction? It’s driving you crazy and you realize you can’t really do anything but absently nod to appease this figment of your imagination. This dream can’t really harbor something so crucial that you can’t live without hearing his voice—but something tells you that you want to hear it. Maybe it’s just the absence of his voice from your life that you’re missing. Or maybe it really is the curiosity of what this man might have to say. No matter, it’s a creation of your own mind anyway. 

You slouch back into the chair and turn your head up to the falling snow, eyes closing and listening to the constant drumming that cracks through the distracting silence. What is that and where is it coming from that it won’t stop? It’s getting louder and you can’t recall seeing anything around you but an empty cityscape and a familiar redhead sitting placidly in the seat across from you. 

Dull eyes open and you crane your head back down to pay attention to your dream visitor again. This doesn’t happen often, so you feel the need to at least pay some respect to the memory that flashes in this unconscious world. 

His lit cigarette is a glowing ember in your vision and you know it’s just the warped reality that’s making it seem like a candle in a dark room. A cigarette is not this intense, but you feel like it’s drawing your attention and making you think. Your eyes are focused on the flickering end of it and his mouth is still moving. You’re not sure if it’s the absent way you watch or the one clear motion that he makes, but suddenly you feel you can read what he’s saying. Small short words and then your mind fabricates his voice to fit with. There’s a strong pull in your chest and you shake your head to not react so strongly. How someone you held such disdain for became a beacon of light in your confusion…you really will never understand. 

Most of his words are mundane things. Words he said before and other jumbled bits of advice are strewn across the motions of his lips and you can’t help but still be entranced by the recollection. It leaves you calm, when you know you’re unsettled. The life you currently lead has been more frightening than you care to admit; and while you really believe that the best for you is the last bit of your life with him, you’re still torn apart in the realization that you both may be separated forever by the end. You haven’t really mentioned it to him seriously, but it’s there in your mind. It’s constantly in your thoughts and you try to smile when all you want is to bring him close to you and never let go. You blame the weak attempts on your sickness, but that’s not entirely the cause. 

Being here—even if just an illusion—is strangely comforting. Words of wisdom you’ve forgotten are slowly being refreshed. 

“Don’t stop, keep walking, don’t you remember?” A voice whispers and you blink—startled. In that moment you blinked, he’s gone and the voice has already died like it never happened at all. You sit there, staring at an empty space in front of you. The city has stopped moving and the snow is suspended. Nothing but the harsh drumming remains. 

“Keep walking…” You whisper and close your eyes. The drumming is louder now and it echoes—creeping up to where you are. You’re acutely aware of the feel of fabric under your fingers now and you crack your eyes open once again. The surroundings are nothing like the city. There’s snow, but it’s flecked against a closed window and the only light coming from outside is from a street lamp that’s just outside your home. The dim lights within your home cast shadows across the adornments in your room and you finally comprehend that you’re awake again. 

You try to take long moments to think, but it’s shattered by loud banging that snaps you out of your reverie each time. The instinct to scream well up, but you suppress it in favor of forcing your brain to recognize what the sounds means. You feel so slow and stupid, because this should be a simple though process; yet you’re trying so hard here. It just feels like you have needles prodding into the soft tissues of your brain and your eyes water from the sudden throb that thinking is causing. Your body twists and you move forward, sliding your legs to find the edge of the bed. Getting out of this safe haven is the last thing you want to do, but you need to do it for the sake of rousing yourself out of this confused state. You feel like you understand what’s going on, but you don’t. You woke from a dream, but you’re still hearing the dull banging that was filtered into that dream. 

That means that it was real and it was invading your subconscious senses. Immediately, your mind is trying to connect it to something within the dream; but you know that’s not really entirely possible. Once you reason with yourself, it’s a simple understanding that you’re hearing something downstairs. The sound is hollow and rattling and it repeats in a pattern of three. Digging through the bank of memories on the surface of immediate recollection, you deduce that it’s someone knocking on your front door. That loose stained glass panel in the door always trembles when strong vibrations hit it.

With as much effort as you can manage, you pull yourself from the bed using the dresser as a stabilizer. You haven’t been very active, so your body feels extremely weak. The repeated banging draws you to it and you know that it’s not going to stop unless you get to the damned door and tell them to go away. Who the hell could it be this late at night—what you assume is night—to be disturbing the silence of your house…

And why hasn’t Kanda answered the door? He’s usually very punctual to answer a door when someone calls on them. Kanda really doesn’t like being disturbed and there’s nothing quite as unsettling as a door breaking the silence of a calm home. This is demonstrated by your irritable hobble, as you slide your way along the wall to get the door. Perhaps Komui came back already. Kanda always locks the door now and Komui would have no way to get in without a key. Even so, where is Kanda and why hasn’t he answered the door? Even if he’d fallen asleep, he would have woken up long before you did. His hearing is still keen and he’s still run on his quick reflexes—where you’re sick and sluggish a lot now. 

“…Kanda?” You call through the house, blocking out the heavy rapping on your door for a moment. You know if Kanda’s not answering the door then he’s not going to respond to you from that mousy call you just made, but you try anyway. The dim lights lead your way to the staircase and you can see the brighter lights glowing up from the bottom. None of the usual lanterns are put out, so that means that the space was occupied not long ago; that draws your attention down more intently. A feeling of dread starts to settle in your gut the closer you get to the stairs; and when you cast your gaze down, you feel like you just dropped a blown-glass model of your heart down the steps. 

The cold feeling in your chest spreads and you have to suck in slow breaths to not choke yourself. It’s fuzzy in your vision, but you can see enough of the form at the bottom of the steps to make the inference. Your legs move automatically to bring you to the steps and drag you down them—the rails hard under your rough grip. The confusion shatters; and the feeble feelings in your bones vanish when your mind catches up and you can finally identify that the love of your life is at the bottom of the staircase... 

Not moving.


	19. Chapter 19

Numbness starts to overtake your lower body and you clamor down the stairs to get to him before you fumble. It will do you no good to topple down. You need to get to him so much that you’ve tuned out the heated fist pounding against your front door. You don’t care who is at the door, because there’s something so much more important in front of you. Your heart is thumping in your chest harder than you can even understand and the sudden desire to stop and vomit nearly breaks your stride. You don’t halt though, because your body wouldn’t let you even if you wanted to. Everything in you is twitching to get to him and pray to every god that you can think of that he’s still alive when you reach him. You plead with everything you can think of; hoping that he hasn’t been in this position for the entire time you’d dozed off. You can barely breathe thinking about that. 

“Kanda…” You whisper as you shake your head to clear the daze out. You’ve been immobile for the most part for quite a period of time and you find it miraculous you’re even able to really get down the stairs, let alone keep yours wits about you as you do it. Something blessed your panicked body in letting you freely move to get to him. “Please tell me you’re okay…” The sound of your voice is so low even you can barely hear it, but your mind is screaming it so loudly that you’re sure that’s the reason you sound washed out in your head. 

Another step and you feel like you’re out of air entirely. This is what’s become of you and you hate it so much you can’t stand it right now. This weakness in you is slowing you from something terribly important. A hurried pace comes to a crawl and you slide down to the step, sitting on it and using your legs to move you slowly down each step. If you keep trying to run down the steps, you’ll fall and you need to get to him in one piece if you have any hopes of helping him. 

If he’s still alive. 

Your body trembles a bit and you’re mixed between a sudden desire to scream in fear and also scream in anger. The rattling door is actually starting to mix with you wrong and it’s becoming the vent to express how much you’re actually terrified beyond belief. If you can scream at them, maybe you can keep yourself together enough to get to him. “ **Stop banging on my fucking door** !” You scream and it almost wipes the breath right out of you. That was the loudest noise you’ve made in a long time and you’re sure it didn’t even sound as loud as you wanted. You just need them to knock it off; you need to concentrate and you can’t with this racket. Every discomfiting feeling is pouring down on you and the last thing you need is something else ticking in your brain. 

The noise stops and you hear muffled voices. The distance prevents you from really hearing it and you choose to ignore it while you sidle down the last steps toward Kanda. Now you can see him clearly. He’s lying on one side and you can visibly see his body move from every slow breath he takes. You’ve never wanted to cry in relief so badly and you think you might actually be. There’s too much going on in your head for you to be sure so you don’t even bother to wipe your face. 

Leaning forward is hard, but you manage. You slip off the last step and sit at the floor right beside him. His legs are bent and his feet are tipped up on the last step. From the way his one arm is under him, you guess that he reached out to catch himself. There would be no way that Kanda could catch himself with how weak his arms have been. Your fingers tremble as you reach toward him and press into his neck to check the strength of his pulse. It’s not thumping hard, but it’s steady and you want to bend over him and sob on him like a big baby. 

“Kanda?” You nudge him a bit and hope he’s able to be roused. If he’d dropped too far down, it’s possible he could have hit his head and given himself a concussion—or worse. You’re careful about his head, because you remember what you were taught. You’re not part of a medical staff and you’re barely in control of yourself as is; so you have no place trying to move him or treat him in any way. A single hand moves over his back and you can feel his heart beating and the way air pours into his lungs. Silver eyes dart around the room until they land on the closest phone. You need to call Komui…or someone, anyone. 

Your legs are done with you, though and you feel numb from your thighs to your toes. Another scream builds up in your throat and you shove it down. If Kanda can hear you at all, the last thing you need to do is scream and scare the shit out of him. You’re already scared enough—both of you don’t need to be. Every ounce of focus in you is what gets you to move closer to his face. It requires you to move to the other side of him. 

What do you do? Your hands frantically twitch like you can actually do something by making such a visible fuss. There’s nothing you can do like this and you don’t have the strength to move just yet. All you can do is wait a few moments and hope that your body recovers enough from your exertion to allow you to at least get the phone. 

Jiggling at the door reminds you that there was someone at the door and your mouth moves without a sound for several tries before you can find your voice. They’re still outside the door and apparently they’re messing with your door handle. The pops and clicks are a familiar order of sounds. You’ve heard this particular sound before and your recollections pull Lavi’s image into the forefront of your brain. Finally sounds come to you and you draw yourself closer to Kanda. “ **Lavi! Lavi! I can’t get to the door, break it in if you have to just hurry please!** ” 

That time, your voice must have come off like a shriek, because the door stops wiggling and the calm moments after are crushed by a loud crunch and a resounding echo of glass breaking. The noise nearly drilled into your brain, but the motion under your hand makes that pain wash out like it was never there to begin with. “Kanda?” 

“Allen? Allen what’s going on?” Lavi’s voice comes through the busted glass panel. His arm slips through the panel and he works to unlock the door from the inside—letting himself in. You’re so grateful to see him and he has no idea. Normally, you both scold him for picking your lock; but this time, you can’t fault him for it and you feel a tinge of guilt for telling him to stop. There was every reason for him to worry when neither of you answered the door. 

“It’s Kanda…” You look up to him from where you are and you can see the pained expression on his face too. The one eye—glittering in the warm, dim light—is a bit wider than Lavi usually shows and he’s moving much quicker now. The urgency kicks in and he pulls the door open more and leans out. You’re confused at first, but then you hear the syllables fall off his tongue and her name spoken with absolute necessity. Lenalee is with him and you rock yourself a bit, because you know she’ll have some idea of what to do and if he can be moved. 

“Komui’s on his way now. He said he called earlier and there was no answer so he asked me to come over here,” Lavi explains and moves over to you while he waits for Lenalee. He kneels and each hand moves to press into the soft throat of you and your partner. He’s checking, not only Kanda, but you as well. You know you’re sick and your body can’t handle the stress you’ve put it under and still are; but Kanda…he’s your world, and without him your body is just a shell anyway. 

“Please tell me he’s okay,” you murmur and try not to come undone under his touch. You’re too frazzled to think straight and it’s dangerous when the only thing in your vision is a haggardly breathing body. The change in his breathing is more encouraging than you want it to be, but he’s still unconscious. He’s at least able to breathe from the way he fell—a small miracle. 

“He’s got a good pulse,” Lavi assures, but you know he’s just saying what he can to keep you from tipping in a direction that he might not be able to calm you from. “It doesn’t look like he has any protruding bones around his neck,” he quietly speaks to you as much as he can—telling you every little bit. Lavi moves around Kanda, to the side you’re not on. “I think his arm’s broken, though...” 

You want to protest when Lavi actually starts to shift Kanda’s body, but you don’t. You just wring your hands out uncomfortably until you’re panting. You draw a breath in and hold it, forcing yourself to slow down before you hyperventilate yourself. 

“Lavi, what’s wr—…Oh my god, Allen…Kanda?” 

Glancing up causes your vision to distort for a moment and there’s a long period between when you can hear and see her. Lenalee isn’t far from you, but you feel like you’re going in slow motion. The world is moving sluggishly around you. You’re trying to keep yourself alert, but your body is arguing incessantly with you. The only thing that’s kept you from slipping out of the conscious world is Kanda. You won’t close your eyes until you know if he’s okay. You don’t let your body shut down until you know if he’s going to come back to you. 

You were supposed to be curled up in bed, sleeping in a heap with each other. He was supposed to be nagging you about getting cleaned up. The two of you weren’t supposed to be helpless at the bottom of the staircase. Kanda’s body is too still for your own comfort—even if you can see his breathing. You want him to be awake. “Please wake up, Kanda…” You mutter and don’t immediately realize that you’ve spoken it aloud. 

“Lavi, help me move him…He looks like he didn’t damage his head any, we can get him to the sofa. That one pulls out to a bed. It was a gift from my brother, I’ll tell you how to fold it out if you’ll move him with me,” Lenalee’s voice is stronger than you recall, but you’re so very thankful for it. She’s a good woman and you regret the secrecy you held; when she’s still concerned first about you and your partner. You’re sure they had other things they needed to be doing, but they’re here—picking up your mess. 

The redhead moves away, light on his feet as ever. You’re jealous of him a bit. He still seems spry and you feel like you’re folding in on yourself. You’d give anything to have that sort of youth. If you did, then this wouldn’t have happened. Kanda could have been safe in your care. And really, that’s all you want. You want your life with him back. Just for a little bit. 

But as you numbly watch Lavi and Lenalee, you realize you’re never going to go back to the way it was. Some part of you was still hung up on you getting better—well enough that you and he could still live like normal people. That was never going to happen and it hurts for it to finally sink it. The most embarrassing thing is that you start to cry. You cry because there are so many uncertainties in your life that make all the perfect things seem so out of reach. Kanda’s been in pain for a long time and you probably haven’t been aware of it. You’ve been sick for many weeks and you only seem to be getting worse after every temporary spout of decent health.

Two years seems like such an improbable number now. It’s such a sad thing when two years sounds like such a gift. That sounds so nice and you just don’t think you’ll have that. There’s no way. Watching them carefully shifting Kanda on the floor, to lay him on his back; you’re faced with reality. 

“Easy…” she whispers, talking both to Lavi and herself. They manage to get his arm from under him and you can see why Lavi thinks it’s broken. The limb is swollen and bruised beyond any normal bruising. There’s a slight twitch in his fingers and you wonder if he can feel this even in his unconsciousness. You hope not. 

Lavi braces Kanda’s head and rolls him flat, his voice dropping off before he can curb himself, “holy shit.” 

You wish he hadn’t said a word, because then you might have focused less on why. There was no way you wouldn’t have noticed it, but you really didn’t need that shot of dread to clamor up your spine before your eyes fell over the dark, black bruises that seemed splashed along Kanda’s skin—reaching from his cheekbone and trailing down until it slipped beneath the veil of his clothing. 

If there was a doubt before, there is none now. He undeniably fell down the stairs and the bruises in his body are the only proof needed. Still, they seem so unnaturally dark and they’re terrifying you until you’re reaching out to him—aimlessly trying to grasp something for comfort. 

Your hands find one of his and you squeeze it for just a moment to try and settle your nerves. The way the muscles twitch in his face make you think he’s awake, but you’re not really sure. Kanda’s not an expressive sleeper, so you don’t really believe he’s sleeping. If he’s awake, then he doesn’t have the capacity to respond. You think you’d rather he be unconscious. 

“Allen…” 

The sound doesn’t take you away from him and you lift his hand and draw it to your face—pressing your cheek to the back of his cool hand. Your hand in his feels comforting, but you know you have to let him go so they can move him. Somehow, that feels like tearing your soul away from you and it’s a complicated process to unravel yourself from him long enough to be separated for even that long. You don’t know how you ever survived being any distance from him. 

This is such a pathetic feeling you have at the moment. He’d roll his eyes at you if he saw you hugging his hand to yourself and blubbering over him like a big baby. You’ve always been this way when it concerns him though. For others, you tend to be a little more aloof. But when it concerns him, your emotions are an ocean of altering tides and sometimes too out of control to predict. You love that he does that to you.

Though right now, you really wish you had a better grasp on yourself. Then letting go wouldn’t feel like torture. Slowly, you lower his hand and hang your head until you think you can release him. 

“Allen?” 

She repeats your name and you know. You have to sit back and let them help him. It’s not like they’re taking him far from you. They want him on a surface that poses fewer threats to his body and you’ll be right there with him after he’s transported the short distance. However, when every second feels like an hour, it’s a hard thing to bear. 

Your grasp weakens and you lean against the stair railing to support yourself. When the panic dies down your body gives up and you have no energy to strain yourself. Your face feels so hot and you can’t really function without someone else. This is what it feels like to succumb to abuse of your body. Suddenly, you wish you’d been less impulsive in your youth. Maybe then, you would have a little longer. 

Fingers curl around your open hand. This startles you at first—sending your heart rate back through the roof until you can digest the sensory information. The weak grip on your hand is from him. You can see his face through the blurry vision you’ve almost gotten used to. His eyes are almost open—blinking shortly, with parted lips to show how much effort it’s taking to show some signs of life. 

Your two friends settle on each side of him and your hand loses its place, slipping you away from him. He’s awake and he’s still alive. He’s still enough in your world to weakly garble and gasp at you—making a weakly formed word, “..bean..sprout..” 

The aching in your heart makes you so lightheaded that you have to lean your head back and suck in air desperately again. Amidst the dry sobs, you just sit there still on the cold floor and repeat, “I’m here,” over and over until you’re not sure you’re conscious anymore. 


	20. Chapter 20

The sheets against your face are the first thing your brain registers. The cool fabrics leave you feeling unpleasantly…comfortable. You think of it like this, because your body is lax; so much so, that it’s hard for you to want to stay still. The itching in your sluggish brain is overwhelming and even as your body struggles to rouse, your brain is already zipping around and trying to connect every piece to the puzzle of what happened in the last moments you were conscious. Even though you have no direct timeline, your brain imprints Kanda immediately and your eyes widen with every blink. 

Darkness fades away with every blink and you’re starting to see things just a bit clearer again. How long has it been? You wonder, but you can’t force your brain to try to answer it. It would do you no good anyway. What you do know, is you’re turned on your side and there’s warmth pressed flush to you. Curled up against you is another body. You can feel clammy skin against your own and you turn your face a bit to see them more clearly. 

You already know it’s Kanda—there’s no one else who can be this close to you and feel so natural. That doesn’t stop your eyes from combing his form. It doesn’t stop your heart from thumping out of control when you recall the reason you’re both bundled on the pull-out sofa. There are very few occasions you’ve utilized the bed part of this thing. The times you have, you’ve remembered very distinctly. The last occurrence prior involved a lot less clothing and a lot more heat; so you’re now very certain you weren’t dreaming about the staircase. 

“Kanda?” You whisper lowly, sort of terrified that he may not answer. He wasn’t really responsive last you remember, but his body moves at the sound of your voice. His breathing pattern changes a bit as well. 

“You’re awake…” 

He speaks so low that you’re sure you wouldn’t hear him if you weren’t so close to his mouth. His voice sounds dry and weak, slurred like he has less control of the refined mannerisms that lace his speech normally. You withdraw from him a bit to gather your wits and see him a little better. Words are a complicated thing at the moment, because you don’t know what to say yet. You’re still too frazzled. 

But yet, you really wish you hadn’t looked at him. You’re reminded of how injured he was last you saw. The bruises that mark his cheeks are still dark, but seem spread—even faded at the edges a bit. He looks terrible. You swallow thickly, trying not to make noises. It’s rude to prod at someone’s injuries, but you can’t help but brush a few fingers over his soft cheek. You’re not pressing hard and you’re not irritating his injury—and if he’s annoyed by it, he hasn’t shown evidence of it. “You…are you…” 

“It doesn’t hurt,” he answers, but it’s not the question you were going to really ask. Yes, you don’t want him in pain, but the real question you wish to ask is lodged in your throat—stuck and you can’t bring yourself to actually speak it. You’re afraid. 

You flounder a bit, searching for anything to say next; but your salvation comes in the form of a shadow over you both. You knew there were others in the room—from basic instinct and knowledge that you’d been helped by them. Perhaps this is why it comes as a surprise to you to see Komui in your vision. You had no idea he had already arrived. 

“I see you’re both awake now. You’ll have to forgive Kanda, Allen, he’s going to be a little difficult to communicate with clearly. I gave him a shot of morphine to ease his pain.” 

The urge to sit up is great, but you can’t with the way Kanda’s laying curled up to you. You’d much rather have him anyway. Still, you know you need to talk to Komui and you want to know what’s going on. The uncomfortable pulsing of your blood through your body is going to make you sick from how roused you’re getting. You feel wide awake, but sick as a dog. You know Kanda could normally feel such a dramatic change in your countenance, but you don’t know now. He’s dazed a bit, content with being glued tightly to you. 

“Komui…I,” you tremble as you speak, because how do you ask? You feel neglectful for not noticing just how unstable Kanda’s body was. “What…can you tell me what happened?” 

Komui sits down on the chair adjacent to the sofa and you lose sight of him as a result. He’s on the other side of Kanda and your partner’s body is in the way. You can still hear him though, so you find that to be enough. “As I’m sure you know…He took a pretty nasty trip down the better half of the stairs. I managed to get a little information out of him and he said his legs gave out on him. While you were both recovering, I did the best examination that I could do…but..” 

“But?” 

“…There’s a complication I hadn’t anticipated.” His voice seems distant, even more so than before and it’s not because of distance from you. He’s muffled his voice—perhaps by his hand or by some other distracting way. This is a sign of distress if you know Komui well enough and that leaves a short quivering in your limbs. “Our medicine was designed for standard use with normal test subjects…he’s very much not that and tweaking it is a bit complex. Try as we might, it still took one extreme to the other.” 

“Komui, what are you saying?” You shift very minimally, but enough to pull a cushion under your head so you can see him just a little. Kanda’s compliant and rolls a bit so that he’s more face down over your chest than before. He seems attracted to the steady thump of your heartbeat—his cool fingers on his good hand knead into your skin affectionately. 

“The medicine that was supposed to help stop his anemia did the opposite effect. He’s bleeding profusely now.” 

Your eyes dart across Kanda’s body so fast you almost make yourself dizzy from the action. It’s a natural response, you think. To think of Kanda in danger just leaves you needing air in your lungs again. “Bleeding? But…”

“Internal bleeding. He’s bleeding into his joints, tissues, organs…It must have happened in a very short time. The reason he fell to begin with probably has something to do with the bleeding in his joints and general swelling. Then the trauma from the fall itself…That’s why he’s bruised so badly.”

“This is fixable though…r…right?” Your throat feels dry and yet you still swallow again. Tightening in your chest becomes so painful that you’re almost wondering if you should tell Komui. Your body is so tired, but that doesn’t stop every nerve from lighting on fire when you think about the outcome of the next few words you’ll exchange with him. You already know what he’s going to say. 

You know. 

The blind hope that he’ll tell you differently is the only thing that’s actually kept you from shaking so uncontrollably that you lose focus. Emotions were never really a thing you’d mastered and right now, you feel like you’ve lost control of every bit of what you’ve finally come to understand. You don’t want to do this anymore. You don’t want to know. You want to lie and pretend it’s going to be okay. With everything you’ve faced, you feel so weak now that this has brought you to your breaking point. “What…what can we do?” You speak again, before he can. 

The way he turns his head down, and away from you, tells you that the underlying pleading in your words makes this hard for him. But he is a doctor and he’s not going to lie to you. Not him. He’s the one person who always truly cared about you exorcists when no one else in the Order did. Still, it’s difficult because neither of you should be reaching this point before he is—you know that’s what he’s thinking. Survivor’s guilt. 

“Make him comfortable…” he finally speaks, his voice breaking and clipping his words short. “He’ll be fortunate if he sees tomorrow night.” 

You expected those words to hurt, to leave you with the stinging pain that you had as it built up—waiting for him to speak—but it doesn’t. Not yet. It’s worse, you think, because you’re deluding yourself with every denying mind trick you can think of to stave off the facts. Your brain is not ready to process this short amount of time yet. You’d spent a month convincing yourself you’d have more time and now you have dramatically less. 

For a moment, you honestly feel like god has no intention of ever letting either of you find happiness without some tragedy destroying it. God will find everything he can to separate you when you finally have found the perfect life. For all you did, you still are left with nothing but coldness. Your heart’s already breaking and you haven’t even lost him yet. You just know, that the next day is going to be the worst hours of however short your life will be. 

He can’t be calm in his head, either, even with the morphine drowning out the pain he must be troubled with. Kanda just doesn’t speak when he’s suffering and you silently mourn that you never had the time to really draw him out of that habit. If you had more time, you would have really pulled him out of his internal hiding. But you don’t have time. You have next to none at all. Even if you started now, you’d never have time to tell him everything you want to say to him. You don’t think you could ever make him understand how much you really love him in that time. 

And perhaps that’s the greatest pain of all. 

It finally breaks the surface. The first sob that comes through is a leak in a weak dam and eventually your senses are drowning in your emotional outburst. Blurriness overtakes your vision and you can hear yourself sucking in quick breaths and trying to be as quiet as you can while you slowly come undone. 

His body against yours feels like a precious treasure that will soon lose its light and no longer glimmer at your touch. You want it to glimmer forever, but it’s fading and you’re overwrought with the sense of loss that’s already settled in your heart. He’s not even gone and you miss him enough to cry. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, slurred against your neck and you want to scream so hard, it makes you hurt. You don’t even know how to handle your emotions and crying doesn’t feel like enough. This confliction makes you dizzy and you’re so close to losing the contents of your stomach. “I should have stayed with you, I’m sorry.” 

If you didn’t fear hurting him worse, you’d have pulled him close to you and embraced him to you until you couldn’t tell where he ended and you began. Instead, you pull up what little energy you do have and slide yourself back down on the weak spring sofa-mattress and close your arms around him—pressing your face to his. 

Neither of you really care if your friends are seeing you cry, weak and broken, in the middle of your living room. At the moment, crying is the only way you can cope.


	21. Chapter 21

There’s been silence in the room for the better half of three hours now. You know that every moment is essentially time you have left with him draining away. Yet, neither of you have spoken. The room is bare and you’re both still on the pull-out couch—inclined up against the back of the sofa with your legs tangled in every blanket in the house. His back is against your chest and the two of you are just staring at the fire you asked Lavi to build before you requested them to leave. 

You know I was probably cruel to ask them to leave just after what you’d been told. You’re sure they wanted more than just a short goodbye; but truthfully, you don’t want them here. Kanda doesn’t either. He doesn’t want to spend what time he does have surrounded by people who are already mourning. Sure, you’re mourning too…but you think you have a perfectly justifiable reason to be mourning the other half of your heart slowly stopping. You know Kanda cares about them too, but he had been the one who wanted you to ask them to come back later. 

This peaceful atmosphere was what he wanted. Just the two of you watching the flame flicker in the old fireplace. It was comforting in some strange way, but it is also the reason neither of you will speak a word. Throwing a rock into the calm waters is too frightening at the moment, but you know you have to say something soon. The matter is what will you say and how…how can you speak without losing it completely? 

Do you try to comfort him when you and he both know he’s dying? From the greater details Komui has given you, you know he’ll bleed until tissues shut down and his body stops functioning. He’s been given shots to ease his pain, but he requested no more. That makes your chest hurt, knowing he may be suffering before this is over. It’s not fair, not fair at all. He doesn’t deserve to hurt any more. However, he chose to have a little clarity over being drugged up. You almost tear up again, thinking about it; because it means he’d rather suffer than be in a haze during his last moments with you. 

You know he feels guilty and you’ve been trying to figure out how to wipe that guilt away from him. It’s not his fault this turned out this way. Neither of you had any way of knowing that he would collapse or that he was even in any condition like he was. Yet he still apologized for not staying by your side. Perhaps if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have fallen; but you may still have never known something was wrong with him until it was too late. It makes you consider how much you’ve taken for granted and how precious time is. Every moment with him is something you’ll never regret. 

It’s the moments that you could have had, but walked away from that you regret. It’s the time you actually turned your back on those precious moments that make it hurt so much now that you’re both at this point. You’re sitting on the edge of fatally ill—and you’ve stopped taking your medicine entirely—and he’s actually dying in your arms. It’s now that you really feel how strong regret can sit. It’s right this moment that it hurts to think of how stupid you were and how a few words could have stopped you both from losing so much. A year to many people doesn’t seem like a lot, but in the short span of your lives, a year has so much contained within it. 

That year that you thought you could walk away and wash yourself of him was the most challenging and spirit crushing year of your life. No matter how you tried, you couldn’t cleanse yourself of how much he infected every facet of you. He was detrimental to your emotions, but he was like air to you. Thinking about it now, if you’d just communicated with him, you both may have suffered less. You and he were both so stupid. 

To think that you almost lost him then too. 

But you…you knew better. You knew Kanda wasn’t like most people…not like you. He couldn’t communicate the same way and to some degree, he still can’t. He can’t openly tell you that he’s in pain. He won’t ever tell you it hurts. He’s better about his emotions, but he’ll never be as fluent in the art of expression as you—and honestly, you’re not very fluent yourself. You should have known back then that Kanda cared much more than he let on. 

You still walked away, though. You still led another life, in another place, for an entire year and it will never stop feeling like a sharp knife twisting in your gut. It will never stop feeling like you’ve betrayed him to some degree and left him to degenerate until he actually almost took his life. Really, how dare you? You were the one who forced him to respect himself and you forced himself to come to terms with being loved and, in turn, loving. Then you took it away and for that lengthy of a time. 

The idea of Kanda leaving you breaks your heart into scattered pieces already…and  _ you _ had left him to feel that way for a year. The idea makes your vision blurry. Your breathing pattern changes and you try to stop the tears from starting, but you can’t. They’ve already spilled over and you’re already taking deeper breaths than before. He’s already noticed. 

“Beansprout,” he lays his head against your collar bone and turns his cheek against your skin. “It’ll be okay.” 

Prickling in your skin almost makes you shudder. He’s comforting you and that feels so wrong. He doesn’t really know why you’re crying. You think it’s probably really horrible for you to be crying over this particular thing yourself, but you do anyway. You’re crying because of what you took from him and because you wish you could give it back. You’re crying because failed communication on your part put such a large gap between you in the first place. The lives you’ve both lived in the years since you both finally put yourself together had been the best years you could ever ask for; but you lament so hard that it took so long. For eight years you and he had lived in silence, drifting apart. For one year, you weren’t together at all. 

You should have had more, but you slacked. Once you had him, you let it just flow and for some reason you thought you didn’t need to direct its path anymore. Now that you’ve learned your lesson, it’s far too late to really make up for it.

And that hurts. 

“I should have given you more, Kanda…” You finally speak, low and slowly—in fear of your voice breaking when your sobs try to breach through. “I shouldn’t have ever left you. I…I never really wanted to.” 

“Beansprout…” He speaks softly and it hurts worse, you think. He doesn’t hold any of it against you, you know that. It doesn’t make it feel any less painful. It does not erase the feelings that decide to show up now of all times. “You know that…neither of us would have come around without something to push…” 

“Maybe not,” you turn your head down, closing your eyes when you hide in his neck. You feel like hiding altogether, but then you realize that hiding was the problem to begin with. You might never be ready to really pour out all the feelings that you keep bottled up, but you’re going to do it—despite your lack of preparedness. It just reminds you how much you and he really are alike. “But I could have done something…I could have…” Your throat closes, fighting down the damnable feelings that leave your vision blurring again—just when you thought you had it under control. “…Talked to you.” The embrace you have on him tightens just a bit and from the outside, you imagine it would appear like you’re holding on to him for dear life. Though, you actually are. “…But I didn’t.” 

“And I didn’t run after you.” His voice is accentuated by a low grunt as he moves in your hold and struggles to turn his weak body enough so he can face you. Once you’ve gotten the idea, you make no hesitation in helping him, drawing him closer to you until he’s all but crawled up in your lap—breathing like he’s run a marathon. You know it must hurt, but he’s already determined he doesn’t care about that. “I should have though—I know it now and I knew it then. I could have run after you any time after that too. I took you for granted and when you walked away, I knew I deserved that. Still, I must be some kind of selfish creature; because all I could really think about was the missing part of me that turned out to be you. How ironic is that, though?” 

He breathes that chuckle into your neck and you consider what he’s saying. He’s right. It is a bit ironic. The man who shunned you and turned you out repeatedly to the point of hatred, ended up being the person so engraved into your soul that nothing is going to erase it. 

“I know I should regret it…And to many ends, I do,” he continues and you listen. You want him to talk to you as much as he can for however long you know he can. “But I never expected to be loved in the first place. For all the misery it put us through, I think it’s overshadowed by what we managed to actually do right.” 

If you have anything to add here, you blanch and lose it when you feel the cool air against the wet spots by your neck. Kanda doesn’t make it obvious and you may have never noticed if not for the physical sense, but it’s a chain reaction and you think he knows that painfully. Maybe that’s why he never lets you see him cry. In his own strange way, he’s considerate and right now, you don’t care for consideration. You’ve cried together, but never with the heaviness of words over it. Here, he’s speaking and it’s starting to weigh. You can even feel the slight tremble in his body. “Kanda…” 

“I do wish we’d had more time…I can’t lie—I think you’d see through it if I tried,” he mutters, but he’s losing clarity with every word—not slurring, but losing his focus for the physical reaction. “I’m surprised we made it this long, though… Even…If…Fuck.” 

Everything comes to a stop like you knew it would. His good arm is holding you as tight as he can, but it’s still weak. He blames himself for the stairs and you know he’ll never stop that, even if you try to convince him it was inevitable. All of these things come down on him at once, much like they do you. However, it’s different when Kanda’s emotions unravel him. He was always the one to release his pain in the jarring outbursts, but now he can’t do that. You don’t think his body would allow him to really let everything go like before. This is also not that type of pain. 

This is the pain that makes Kanda unafraid to be human. This is what has him turned in your arms and biting back the sobs that still slip through. For the first time, you earnestly think he might be scared. You know death has never been a fear for him. 

But you also know he never had anything to lose until now. 

Before you’re even aware, you’re wiping the wet trails from your face again and trying to keep yourself in check before you break down again. You’ll have time to lose your mind when you actually don’t have him still with you—though thoughts like these aren’t making this much easier. 

“I don’t want to go yet,” he mouths into your chest, barely coherent with his words. 

“I don’t want you to either,” you breathe in a snuffling huff—face puffy and ugly already. “I can’t…” You swallow hard, unable to finish another sentence while your throat is closing. If this is anything like how he felt when you left him, then you don’t know how he didn’t end up taking his life after all—even if that’s a painful thought. You can barely function as it is, you really don’t think you’ll be able to deal with the aftermath of where this is going. Your heart’s already crumbling in the hands of god—you don’t think you’ll have anything more to give. 

His quivering dies a bit, but he’s still melted into your body—in need of your comfort. “I don’t fuckin know what comes next…I don’t,” he hisses, trying to recover the lucidity he’s steadily losing. “If this is it…if everything starts over…if you and I are just a temporary joke in time, never meant to meet twice…I’d rather just stop here, but…” he pauses to stare up, blinking more wet lines down his face, “I don’t want to stop here. I’m not afraid of death. Death is easy,” he cries, “being loved…that isn’t. Not at all. I lived for one purpose and I fulfilled that a long time ago, but…then you happened.” He turns his head back again and lets a low, unstable cry slide from his throat—unsettling you until you’re starting another cycle of tears. “I don’t want to lose it now…This one upside to being alive.” 

You’re shaking your head until it feels like you’re protesting god himself. He’s saying what he needs to, he's speaking out the fears he has and it’s breaking you in so many different ways that you don’t know how to ease this anxiety. The last thing you want is him to leave you, terrified for what happens next—what happens to both of you. Truthfully, that’s scared you too. Being separated from Kanda feels like you’re being torn apart entirely. You never believed in the idea of soul mates until you found yours. 

There aren’t really words to say to make everything better, because it’s not going to get better. There’s no downside to the hill that leaves you both walking down the otherside, but your impulsive heart, and the way you love him so much it could drown you, leave you speaking—just saying the things that come first from your lips. You dig from the very few prayers and what small beliefs you hold on to in hopes that god has mercy on you. “I’ll follow you, wherever you go, Kanda,” you suck in several breaths in quick succession—feeling warm from the crying you’ve both been doing now that words finally happened. “I promise you…I promise…I will be there…Just try to wait for me so I can catch up.” 

He nearly bites his lip open with how purposefully he’s holding back his emotions. You know he doesn’t want to stress his body any more—though it’s hard like this. It’s hard not to feel so overwhelmed. You can’t really imagine this from his perspective, but you’d be as frazzled. When there are no certainties and you face losing the only thing that matters, suddenly everything is so damn terrifying it hurts. You want him to know that you’ll be with him, no matter what—even though you have no idea what happens next. 

You  _ will _ go where he does. God owes you that much. 

“You know how I hate people who don’t keep promises,” he replies dryly, blinking slowly and slumping a bit against your shoulder—aftershocked a bit from so much emotional venting. He needs to catch his breath and calm himself, and you let him. All of the things he needs to say can be spoken over the remaining hours and you won’t rush him. You’ll talk to him slowly, hold him warmly, and you will do whatever it takes to make sure he’s as comfortable as possible. With the worst of the words spoken, you will make certain that he closes his eyes for the last time in contentment.


	22. Chapter 22

His breathing is so soft you can barely hear it now. The two of you have shifted and you’re lying across the length of where the couch would normally be—surrounded in pillows and nearly barricaded in by blankets. It’s a comfortable little nest you’ve created. You’re lying against the armrest and he’s stretched across your body, with his legs propped up and resting on the opposite arm. The cool air across his skin seems to be refreshing him just a little bit and you’ve been able to relax with him for some hours since he’d asked you to open the window. 

Even with the snow floating down—some flaking into the room across from where you are—the room manages to be just the right temperature above chilly. The rekindled fire helps, you think, and the mounds of blankets might also have something to do with it. He said he wanted to see the snow and to smell the fresh air. You’ll be hard pressed to deny him anything he wants now. If you can feasibly do it, you will. The two of you have these last hours—you want to fill every moment with tranquility. 

In all of the hours that have passed, you’ve not spoken too much, but you don’t feel like it’s wasted silence. Your relationship with him has never been one based on much discussion and perhaps this quiet introspective period is for both of you to come to accept certain things so words might be easier to speak. The longer you hold him to your heart, the more it breaks—but also the more you come to terms with having him suddenly yanked away from you by fate. You know that his absence will leave you lost and confused, but you also know that you’ve been so fortunate to have him for what he is. You were fortunate to see Kanda come through his worst so you could see him at his best. It was never perfect, but you knew it wouldn’t be. 

Still, it was perfect enough and you’ll keep all the memories you’ve gathered close to your heart to help cushion the blow. He’s being braver than you can imagine, losing his body slowly while you hold him. Yet, he hasn’t complained about the pain he must be feeling [at least in the arm he broke] and he’s not said a word about the discomfort you imagine he’s feeling from the dying tissues in his body. You just wish it had been much less sudden than this. 

He shifts and turns against you, rolling his face into your shoulder and taking a deep breath against the warmth of your body. You’d never call him on it, but you can feel his cheek rubbing your skin. It’s an affectionate gesture that he’s done a time or two, but never so blatantly. The action leaves fluttering in your stomach—fluttering that makes your heart hurt, because it’s such a warm loving sensation. There’s a recoil in your body when his lips drag across your bare arm and you can feel the words he’s speaking. He’s not going to break this perfectly physical moment with words, but he’s managed to communicate them anyway. Just a few words that remind you how much he really cares and just enough to pull the tear back down your face again. 

They don’t get too far down your face before he’s wiping them back. His thumb brushes against your cheek and he’s looking back up at you—watching you quietly. He doesn’t want you to hurt more than necessary, but you and he both know it’s going to hurt no matter how much you both try to prepare for it. You’re just more than overjoyed that you can even walk him to the end of his road. 

“Don’t forget to close the window, Allen,” he whispers close to your ear and it feels chillier than the air. “You’ll freeze to death if you leave it open too long.” 

“I’ll close it when you’re sleeping,” you reply, voice wobbling like your tongue is numbing—which, it just might be. “The fire’s still going, so it’ll be okay.” 

“Alright then,” he closes his eyes and returns to his reclined position just under your neck. His breathing is a bit strained now. In the silent room, you can hear it much better than before. Against the chilly air, you can feel his heart beating through his back—where your hands have migrated, rubbing comforting circles through the fabric of your sweater that he claimed as his. 

The light in the room is bouncing around now—flickering over the two of you from the way the fire’s dying glow radiates across the room. It’s growing darker outside and you know that the day is slowly wearing thin. A twisting knot in your gut makes your brain fly through a dozen thoughts all at once and you’re turning your eyes up trying to think of anything you want to do or say before you’ve lost your chance. You know there’s something. There’s something there that you’re going to regret if you don’t say it and you’re grieving so much it’s blocking out what it is that you need to convey. 

Whatever it was, it feels like it’s something important and you’re breathing deeper again—to control the emotions that overflow as they have been for the last day. The last thing he needs is to leave you while you’re sobbing pathetically at him—even if that’s what you really want to do right now. A part of you wishes you could just wrap your arms around him and scream until you wake yourself up, but you know it’s not a dream your mind would ever hurt you so badly with. 

This man hadn’t grown up with you, but you grew backwards together; returning from a hardened soldier to big kids that you couldn’t be when society still deems you children. You almost want to open your mouth to make a joke about dying young. You know he’d see the humor in it. Yet…you just can’t bring yourself to speak a word that cements it in before you’re ready—not that you’ll ever actually be ready for it. 

This is about as ready as you’ll be, you think as you steady your breathing while he’s caressing your cheek. His sultry voice comes in a muffled hum, breaking through the silence of the room that feels dreadfully somber. The melodic notes are muffled, uneven and strangely nostalgic. 

Kanda’s never sung to you before—not in a way that you actually wanted to hear—but he’s making the closest attempt you can consider. The low humming stretches across the room and fills it until it’s permeated everything about the scene. Snow continues to flicker in and you know the fire will die soon, but you can’t move away from him. Your body refuses to break contact. Every thread between you is slowly fraying and you won’t make it snap faster. 

You curse your mortal bodies sometimes. You curse this loss that you feel is just too soon. If you’d never been a soldier…if you’d never been born this way…then maybe the two of you would never have suffered. 

Of course, maybe you would have never met at all—rather, more probable that you wouldn’t have. That’s a consideration you don’t even want to let run through your mind. Your life without him would feel incomplete. It will feel incomplete. 

This time, you wipe the wetness from your face with your own hand. You’ve already resettled so he’s as flush to you and comfortable as possible. His eyes are closed and his face is half hidden in your shirt. The strong body is now limp against you and the only indication that he’s still awake is the constant humming. The steady murmurs of a tune you haven’t heard in so long. 

God, that song. 

You almost can’t believe he remembers the tune. It’s been so long since then, but you remember just like he does. The first mission you went on, when he hated you. You always assumed that he dismissed that—maybe wrote it off as a forgettable mission, but that is apparently not the case. It’s burned into his mind in the same way it’s burned into yours and when you find yourself crying again, it’s not because of the overwhelming sadness; but it’s because of the strange way your lives have drawn you down the path to salvation. 

You simply listen to the melody loop, repeating a few times over as time slips away and you both settle the last things you have to say without saying it at all. You love him so much it hurts and he feels the same. You don’t actually have to utter the words for them to be felt and it’s relieving, because you want to hear this song. 

In the silent room, you strain to hear it until it’s blending into the shuddering wind and you hold your breath to let the last sounds sink in your brain. The song cycles through and you drink it in until it’s so drowned in the whining breeze and crackling wood of the fireplace that it’s lost completely. 

The passage of time is hard to discern when your mind’s foggy from the swirl of memories and thoughts. You have no idea how long it’s been since his humming has gone silent, but you remember from way back then…

“Kanda?” 

There will be no answer and no movement when your fingers dig into his back to shake him just a small bit—trying to rouse any response at all. From where you are, looking down at him, you see that he’s already drifted off to a peaceful sleep. Silver eyes slipped closed, drowning the sight out for the moment and you part your lips to huff in a few breaths, your face burning from the swell of emotions you’re strangling down. 

“Goodbye, Kanda.”


	23. Chapter 23

You're sitting on the guest bed in Lenalee's home, staring dispassionately at the lifeless paintings on the wall. They may not actually be lifeless, but they are in your tired mind. Today has been...nothing less than a challenge just to keep yourself from collapsing into a broken pile of despair. It's been two weeks since Kanda left you behind and you're still lingering on the edge of tears at every waking moment. Your face is probably flushed constantly, between your fluctuating sickness and the crying you've been struggling with.

The small jar in your hands makes clacking noises as your fingers tremble over the lid. You haven't let this go and you don't think you ever will want to. What's left of your life is contained within the plain, antique piece and it's a struggle to tear yourself away from anything that feels like Kanda. For this reason, you wear his clothes, and you tie your hair back the way he once did. On your wrist is the watch that Kanda held as valuable to him. You must look strange wearing a watch on each arm, but you don't care anymore. Anything that feels of Kanda is something you clutch like its life support.

Perhaps this is why you feel uneasy in her home and not your own. You wanted to return back to the abode you and he shared, but the memorial lasted a bit longer than was expected and Lenalee is an insistent woman. She could see that you were growing too weary to really travel back and you just need to breathe.

The service for Kanda was beautiful. There were lots of wonderfully arranged flowers--ones he favored and pulled from the garden he had built at the last housing they had with the Black Order. Someone had taken over his work and kept them alive to be gathered--which was such an amazing gesture. Everything else was simple; very earthy and meditative. It felt like a zen garden and not a memorial.

As per Kanda's request, there were no unnecessary speeches or tributes that usually come with these things. It was a gathering of friends and those he might even stretch to call family. No one dressed formally and there were no forced moments of silence. This memorial was just a place of reflection.

Lenalee made food--all of Kanda's favorites--and her husband told stories from years ago while the younger ones listened. Many of your friends helped you collect his paintings to be dispersed among those he held closer to his guarded heart. 

You were seated in the first pew of the sanctuary for much of it--simply watching and taking in the collection of people who showed up. You kept distance for much of the time. They knew you were hurting, but they also knew you didn't want it to be called out so blatantly. You need time to really grieve and two weeks simply hadn't been enough from the time of his passing to the memorial. So really, no one was surprised when you stood up and walked aimlessly down the line-up of his paintings--all of which were being displayed for this event. No one was surprised when you reached his last one--the one you still have--and sunk to your knees in front of it. No one was surprised when you cried--louder and louder with every breath.

They cried with you.

For all the love Kanda didn't think he deserved, he certainly was a cherished person who would be dearly missed. He scooped out a piece of your heart that would never be filled until what’s left of you is left in the same container that holds him. You turn and lean against the wall by the head of the bed. You feel heavy and weak—with a touch of dizziness. You’re too tired to even cry at this very moment—yet somehow you still want to. Part of you wishes you were healthy enough to really open your lungs and scream it all out like he used to do. You feel like it would alleviate this ungodly pressure that’s crushing you slowly. 

You sit in silence, staring down at his container and you think back on that year that you left him and you wonder if this is how he felt. Sure, it’s a bit different; but this wasn’t a choice. You imagine it would have hurt much more if it hadn’t been a force of nature. This is not something you should be thinking about, you know. He’d be rolling in his grave, if he had one, if he knew you were holding this regret so close to your heart. It’s strange how much you learned from him when you were trying to open him up. 

Regret is a scar that can’t be seen, but it’s going to withstand longer than any physical mark. Kanda was right on that one. He’d be pleased to know that. Even so, you know you need to stop obsessing over the span of time that’s long gone and done. What you want to live with now are the memories that warm you, not leave you cold. 

It’s not like you didn’t know that the two of you would separate at some point. Kanda’s body has been so abused through the years of fighting and you weren’t going to live long either. You suppose you just didn’t see it coming. Now that you’re alone, you really understand loss. What you felt when Cross died was nothing compared to this burning sensation in your chest—as if you’ve collapsed a lung and you can’t breathe because he was the air that filled the one you can’t inflate. 

While you’re busy reflecting and trying to quell the tremors in your body, Lenalee is bringing food into your room. The gesture is a kind one, but you don’t think you can eat tonight. You know you should, but the appetite is simply not there. What a strange thing, you think. You’ve always been ready to eat anything that was tossed your way, but now it feels like it would just make you sick—especially with how lightheaded you feel. 

“Allen?” She speaks softly and you look up, seeing her closer to you than you realized. She opens her mouth to ask, but it falls flat. Asking you if you’re okay is definitely not appropriate, when it’s so very clear that you’re not. Instead, she seems to divert her thoughts elsewhere and moves to sit beside you on the bed. She’s cried a lot with you and you’ve spent a good hour or two crying into her shoulder. At some point, you’ll make an effort to apologize for the wet mess you probably left on her during the later half of the memorial. 

“Sorry, I don’t think I can eat tonight,” you admit, hesitantly placing the jar on the table just by your leg. You refuse to be far from it, but you don’t want to risk dropping it at this point. 

“I understand,” she nods. Normally, she’d argue until you conceded. This time, she can understand why you’re declining. She has someone who she considers a deeply rooted part of her and Lenalee was always an empathetic one. “What are you going to do from here?” 

It’s a good question, but you know where it’s leading. You may be in a state of delayed shock, but you’re not deaf yet. You’d have to have been to not hear her speaking with Lavi earlier in the day. As much as you appreciate the gesture, you don’t think you can accept the offer she’s going to turn out after. She’ll want to take care of you while you’re still ill and your body permanently drained from the infection you caught from him. She’s opened this room for you and you simply can’t take it—a fact you’ll have to state implicitly.

“I’m going back home,” you answer, keeping it short. You’ll let it play out, simply to not seem rude. You don’t want to be a burden, but you also don’t want to leave the house where you feel his presence. 

Her fingers are curling around each other and she’s fidgeting quite a bit. She doesn’t want to make you uncomfortable or offend you, but she’s very much concerned about you. “Are you sure? With everything that happened…” 

“Yes, I’m sure,” you nod, staring off at the painting on the far wall. You hope she’ll place his painting somewhere instead of this plain stock piece. “I’m going to stay there in our home. He stayed when I left and I will do the same. I know many people can’t…it hurts, but it would hurt more if I didn’t have his presence around me. This room feels sterile compared to the bed I want to sleep in. If I can’t have him actually breathing in my arms,” you realize you’re tearing up again—blinking it down your face before you can stop it, “then I can at least surround myself in things that feel of him. I can have his memories and I can dream of him in the place where we lost ourselves and found ourselves again.” 

“Allen…” she turns her face, covering her trembling lip with her hand. She draws closer to you and you let her. You even move closer yourself until you’re wrapped in her warm embrace. It’s not the same warmth that Kanda’s embrace gave, but it’s enough for the moment. 

“I’m going to go home and maybe I’ll learn to paint,” you cry, trying to put a smile with the tears—creating a very conflicting expression. “That way, when I also die in that house, you can put my crappy inartistic mess next to his. He’d find good humor in that,” you assure, making strange noises that even you can’t discern if they’re chuckles or sobs. You don’t know what you’re feeling at the moment. Everything is too confusing, jumbled and tiring. “I miss him so much already,” you finally croak once the humor dies. It’s hard to keep yourself in good spirits, but you’re trying. 

“I know you do, Allen,” she brings you to her, bringing you both back so that you’re lying your head over her shoulder while she’s back on the bed. You’ll lay there with her until you’ve calmed yourself enough to sleep. “I will help you any way I can to ease this for you.” 

She’s so earnest that you don’t know how on Earth you were lucky enough to find someone like her that you can easily call a sister. You know that you will need her help in the future, while you’re struggling with keeping your pieces together. You will take this one step at a time. There are a few things you want to do—for yourself and for him—before you join him. You just have to keep your head above water and remember everything good about the man who managed to permeate your being down to your soul. 

“Thank you, Lenalee,” you whisper and forget to even try to hold back the emotions drowning out the world around you. 

He’s not really gone, you remind yourself, he’s just a little bit ahead of you this time.


	24. Chapter 24

Snow drifts into the room as you hobble back to sit on the small couch not too far from the open window. This is the first heavy snow of the year and you almost find it ironic that it would fall on the anniversary of his passing. 

It’s been a year. Three-hundred and sixty-five days since you last felt his heart beating against you and heard his last breath. You’re not sure if it’s felt like a very short year or the longest in all of your life. Truthfully, you haven’t had it together this year. You’ve milled about this house, passing your time with whatever you could keep your hands busy with. Like you said you would, you learned to paint semi-decently and you’ve filled your house with plants and things to care for passively. You want this home to feel alive even though it never will again. These walls contain nothing but emptiness and you. Try as you might, you haven’t been able to alleviate the crying in your heart—even if you’ve managed to erase it from your face. 

Living here hasn’t been easy nor has it really been good for your mental health. Everyone around you knows this as well and they’ve tried very hard to make you leave it. A year of grieving might seem like enough to them, but it’s not for you. So you’ve fought them all along the way. Even when Lavi moved in for a week to try and keep your company—and subtly convince you to come back with him—you stood your ground, keeping your feet planted in this house. Maybe it’s a bad decision to do so. Perhaps Kanda would be angry if he knew how you’ve spent this year. 

You just really don’t care to leave, though. Kanda’s home is yours, even when he’s not there and this place was the only home either of you have ever truly had. 

So you recline back into the old sofa that was the last place he was. Even though he left you on this damnable piece of furniture, you still find yourself sitting here every day. Your body breaks down every day, but you still wobble over to it and slump against the cushions and somehow manage to sleep on it. It’s become your bed since a year ago. You haven’t slept in your actual bed since; just this couch. It’s the only place you can really fall asleep. It’s the only place you can dream and when you dream, he’s still here. 

There have been times when you wished the god that seemed to have abandoned you would just take you away. Many times you wanted to stop breathing and just let yourself drift off to peace. You never take it that far, though. Kanda made it a year without you. Kanda didn’t end his suffering, despite knowing that you had possibly moved on to start a life somewhere else. You lived to this point on that thought alone. The time you’ve had to yourself has been the time you needed to close all of the doors you’d left open. 

You’ve manned-up and you’ve apologized to the woman you toyed with, when Kanda was the one in your heart all along. You sat down with her and you unloaded the truth. She forgave you—lifting such a weight from your shoulders. You know Kanda would be proud of you to actually suck it up and do that. 

Aside from that, you’ve taken several months out of this year to write. You’ve written endless pages of your experiences with Kanda, your travels and your life since he passed away. A large assortment of thoughts and stories are combined in a book that you’ve set aside. It’s not quite a comprehensive novel, but it could easily read like a biography if you wanted to call it that. Between several pages are drawings and photos to put to the words. It’s a book of memories, even if you’re not sure how much they’ll mean when you’re gone too. Perhaps they’ll be taken by someone you know and put in a box never to be seen again. Maybe they’ll disappear entirely. Those considerations don’t matter too much to you, though; because they’re there for you right now. They’re all validated by the ink on the paper. 

At the moment, they’re out of your reach and you don’t have the strength to get up and obtain them to look through. You already know the contents, so there’s no point anyway. Even if your body allowed you to move that freely, you don’t think you’d have much to gain. All you’d be met with are photos of the person you yearn so much to see again. You think you’d rather remain where you are and think, letting the cold air permeate your clothes—prickling at your skin and reminding you how to feel again. 

You close your eyes and breath, inhaling and exhaling slowly until it becomes a forced rhythm. Sometimes, it feels like work just to do so. Between your sickness that never seems to really go away and your broken heart, your body seems to struggle to want to keep itself in motion. Somehow you’ve managed until now. 

A part of you feels saddened by the fact that you really have no idea what to do with this day—this anniversary. It feels like a knife twisting in your gut again and you hardly think you want to accentuate the twisting of the blade by commemorating the subject that’s unknowingly holding that knife. You won’t light a candle and wait for it to burn out and you have no grave to visit—just the jar of ashes sitting on the glass table just arm’s length from you. Instead, you sit on the couch, with the window open as it snows in and you sing. 

You hate and love the song that you whisper quietly into the cold, empty house. The first time you listened to it ended in loss and so did the last time you heard it. And yet, the song is hauntingly beautiful and makes you feel comforted for a strange reason. You remember the words so well that it hurts your chest a bit. There’s a pause in the song so you can catch another breath—a breath that feels like it’s such an effort. You know why it’s an effort. When you’re mouthing the quiet tune, you’re feeling the torrential downpour of emotions that threaten the stability of your voice. 

The struggle to keep yourself from folding inward and wailing like a child takes so much energy out of you that you have to just stop for minutes at a time, before you can continue to sing any bit. When Kanda was minutes from leaving you, he still managed to hum the melody, but you really can’t. You’re not as strong as you think he was. He’d probably disagree with you, but he’s not here to argue. 

You really wish he was here to argue. You’d give anything for him to argue with you right now. You don’t even care if he would be having a fit for some stupid thing or another. If you could be on the receiving end of his barbed tongue one more time, you’d welcome it. 

But all you get is a cold gust of wind tossing some more wet, cold, snow into your home. You’ve come to hate snow and you know it’s only because your mind associates everything about that day as something unpleasant. For once, you really wish you could shut your mind off and enjoy it like he did. Instead, you just sit there—limp against the cushions—and watch the snow floating down. 

You can’t even begin to calculate how long you remain where you are and you really have no immediate intent to move. Somewhere along the lines, you realized you’ve stopped singing and you start again; repeating the tune until it’s become a constant sound—only stopping to cry for a few minutes again. You wonder idly, when you wipe your face, how it would look to someone on the outside. Seeing a grown man cry over another grown man would probably be weird to anyone else. You’ve learned that real love is something that you can be shameless about. If you need to cry for Kanda, you will cry. 

Crying leaves you feeling better, but tired and you move yourself into a lying position across the length of the sofa. You’ll nap here, falling asleep as you continue to hum the song—much like he did. You’ve realized that you don’t have the energy to sing after the sobs wracked your body. Once upon a time you had more strength than this. 

You exhale and turn your head into the cushion of the armrest. Your eyes feel heavy and you don’t fight to stay awake. There’s no reason to do that sort of thing anymore. If your body wants to rest, then you won’t deny it. Fluttering eyes eventually drift closed and your mind trickles over some of the last words you can remember Kanda speaking. 

_ Don’t forget to close the window, Allen. You’ll freeze to death if you leave it open too long. _

Once more you open your eyes to stare at the curtains blowing in the cold breeze and the white flecks flaking across the floor of your home. You’re too tired to move at the moment, so you let your eyes rest—closing slowly again and cutting your vision from everything around you. Before you let your consciousness fade out, you can almost swear you feel Kanda’s warmth one last time. 

“I’ll close it when I wake up.”


	25. Epilogue

The buzzing by your head is a sudden startling sound that seeps into an unpleasant crook of your brain and it jars you right out of your sleep. You groan but fumble around, patting across your sheets and pillows to find the alarm clock that you’ve hidden in your bed somewhere. You’ve tried not to make a habit of keeping it actually on your bed, but you can’t seem to break that habit. It’s probably a bad idea to sleep with it in reach—but you’ve yet to be late to any important events yet. That’s possibly because once you’ve gotten the thing in your hands you cut it off and immediately crawl out of the bed. Staying in it will only make you go back to sleep—a thing you’re set on avoiding. 

You fumble around your room with your eyes closed—getting dressed by half-heartedly hopping around your room and collecting whatever garments look cleanest to you at the moment. You’ve mastered the art of putting yourself together in ten minutes and not looking like that’s what you just did. Some would be jealous of it, but you honestly wish you had more conviction to actually spend some time making yourself look decent for being in public—at least then you might wake up a bit more before stumbling out into the world where you have to actually socialize with other people who are way better at waking up in the morning. 

This is a bad habit you’ve gotten from your parental unit—even though the man tries so hard to deny it. You can attest to this with every time you walk out into the living room—like you do now—and he’s lying face down on the couch with his legs bent up to compensate for being too tall to be sleeping on that thing. There are always books surrounding him and he’s even got one half opened under his face—just like every other time. This time, he’s even got an unlit cigarette hanging out of his mouth and you just shake your head. 

Mornings like these are more common than not and you’ve adjusted yourself to keeping the morning schedule running. You mull about the kitchen, preparing coffee from the machine that is timed to start brewing at about the time your alarm clock initially goes off. This makes delivering the thermos of coffee a simple process once you emerge from your room. 

You shuffle back to him and you set the coffee on the table by the small sofa and you kneel, getting closer to his face so you can ease him into the world of the conscious. You learned young that jarring him out of sleep isn’t a wise idea if you want to not end up being thrown across the room. “Old man, it’s time to get up,” you mutter quietly and you nudge him a time or two. He grumbles and turns his face into the book, letting his red hair spill all over the pages. “Come on, it’s time to get up, you’ve got a lecture in thirty-minutes.” 

He’s not going to fight you, exactly; but he’ll protest as long as he can get away with, which is usually when you threaten him with time. One of these days, you assume he’s going to wizen up in his sleep and not believe you when you say he’s going to be really late if he doesn’t get up—but for the moment, you’re going to use whatever gets him out of…bed. “Dad, what time did you go to sleep?” You nudge again, sitting on your legs and leaning against the couch. 

“Three or something,” he answers now that he’s facing away from you—turning in his half-sleep haze. 

“So that means add three hours and you know it’s like seven thirty right? You’ve only slept for an hour and a half, you’ve got to stop this,” you lecture him as he starts to move more. He’s going to start falling off the couch now that he’s not carefully folded into the cushions. He’s way too tall for sleeping on a loveseat—especially when he has a bed. 

You appreciate that you find him like this, though, as weird as that sounds. He’s working hard to move his own education along as well as working as a professor to put you through college at the same time. Sometimes it’s weird that you can tell your classmates that your father is your study buddy; but at the same time, at least you know he’ll beat the knowledge into you somehow. 

Still…he’s making bad habits in staying up so late, just to get up so early and it’s because of this that you’ve turned into the parental figure when it comes to operating mornings. You pull him out of bed and you bring him coffee and occasionally food before the two of you leave your small apartment for the college you both attend—one as a student and one as a student  _ and _ teacher. He’s working on his Masters degrees and you’re steadily moving your biology courses along—after changing your major twice. 

You saunter back into the kitchen and slam down a glass of orange juice and clean out the sink of any dishes while he’s picking up and orienting himself. By the time he’s vertical, you’ve already moved out of the kitchen and you’re retrieving his clothes for him. Many people would consider this very strange, but you don’t think much of it when you have to direct him into the bathroom and assist him in making sure he buttons his shirt up evenly; as well as making sure he’s run a brush through the fiery red mop of hair he’s usually got tied back. 

“Allen,” he grunts, padding out of the bathroom sluggishly and making his way toward the door where his shoes are. It takes him at least five minutes to get his shoes on this early in the morning and you know his thoughts are a bit disjointed. When he says your name, you know you don’t have to actually pay attention until about ten minutes later when he finally thinks of what he was planning to say to you. 

It’s really not that he’s that bad at mornings—he used to be a very alert morning person—but when he started teaching  _ and _ studying, suddenly sleep stopped happening. You can understand that really, because you’re not too much better; and the terrible thing about  _ that _ is that you don’t have a job to give the reason why you’re usually awake at four in the morning. 

Still, it’s a bit extreme when he’s a walking comatose patient until just before you leave the apartment. 

“What were you going to say?” You prod, knowing it’ll jump his memory and he’ll remember what it was he was going to say.    


“When are your lectures this morning?” he asks between puffs of cigarette as he shoves you out the door—which you always make a half-hearted snarl at him. He’s realized he’s going to be late if you don’t get a move on and suddenly it’s important to hurry up. 

“I don’t have any lectures today, all my classes got canceled remember?” 

He doesn’t remember and it’s plainly obvious. He still throws the keys at you and you know that means your driving. This is how it always is and you’re content with it staying that way. It would be mortifying to see him driving before he’s actually alert—especially with the depth perception he doesn’t have because of his right eye. So you slide into the driver’s seat and start the car up while he tosses his books into the back seat. When he climbs in, you put the car in drive and start your way toward the college. 

“You said something like that, maybe,” he replies, blowing smoke out the window more for your sake than anything else. “I might have been half asleep.” 

“I think you were. I also mentioned that I was going out today.” 

“Do you want to take the car?” 

You’re almost surprised by the offer, because you know he’ll be out later than you will and you can always catch an early bus back if you need to—most of the time that’s how you get around. He seems to be more than agreeable with you taking it though. “How will you get back home?” 

“I have somewhere to be after my classes. I already have a ride,” he answers vaguely, but he’s not as slick as he thinks he is, because you already know what that actually means. 

“Oh, going to see that pretty girlfriend of yours who happens to be younger than I am and could feasibly be your daughter?” You tease him because it’s pretty much true. He’s a little late to the dating party after whatever happened with the woman you might have called mom if she lived long enough for you to meet her. Only just lately did he meet someone he’s taken any interest in—even though she’s extremely younger than he is. 

“Boy, shut your face hole before I put my cigarette out in your eye,” he snaps, but he’s not really serious. If he even tried to do that, you’d end up crashing and killing you both anyway—which is not something either of you really want at the moment. “Age doesn’t matter between consenting adults.”

You just snicker. “Does she call you ‘daddy’ when you spank her?” 

“Boy, pull this car over and I’ll show you what a spanking looks like.” 

“Easy now, old man,” you say calmly to smooth his ruffled feathers. “We don’t need you having fits before you have to go talk about uninteresting things to people who are also probably older than your girlfriend.” 

“Boy.” 

“Alright, alright, I’m done.” You’re still chuckling though, because it really is nothing less than hilarious to you that he gets so wound up over it. You’re twenty-four this year and she’s twenty-two. It’ll never stop being funny. “But yeah, if you don’t mind, I’d like to take the car. I’ve got a date after I meet up with my friends. I mean, I could take the bus, but—.”

“You don’t take buses on a date boy,” he scoffs at the idea and shifts in his seat, ready to hop out as the building approaches. You know that the only way this arrangement even works is because the college is a ten minute drive. “Besides, it’s nice to see you making a genuine effort not to die a virgin bachelor who hangs out with his old man more than people his own damn age.” 

“You make me sound really lame, I hope you know that.” 

“I did that well on purpose.” 

“Jerk.” 

“Dumb brat. Just don’t fuck him on the first date.”

“ _ Dad,” _ you hiss quickly, “I wouldn’t do that! I haven’t even met him ye—f….fuck,” you draw it out and realize you’ve already told on yourself. He had no idea that your interest was in a specifically  _ gendered _ person. You’ve never told him about your dates and never really gotten to the point of introducing him to the very few you’ve had. 

For as crass as he is, you’re surprised he hasn’t actually teased you for your lack of interest in dating. You’ve expressed to him a few times that you’re looking for someone specific and you can’t explain why or who exactly, but you know them already. You can’t explain to him about the dreams you’ve had that you know have to be a reality. Your friends think you’re a lunatic for earnestly believing in past lives like you do, but it’s always felt too real and you’ve always run into people you feel you’ve already met. When you met your best friends, you already knew their names. You already knew they were going to love each other like they do now. Just like you already know many of the other people you’ve run across in your lifetime. 

Even your own father was someone you swear your soul remembers from before. This is how you know he’s going to prod at you like you’re made for his entertainment. “How did you even know? Have you been reading my emails?” You grunt before he can openly chortle at you. 

“Hey, Allen, have you ever wondered why I named you  _ Walker  _ instead of giving you my name?” He asks, ignoring your accusation entirely. It grates on your nerves because you feel exposed and a bit stupid now. If he’s upset by your apparent curved sexual orientation, he’s not showing it, though. 

“Maybe, why? What’s that got to do with anything?” 

The car stops and he gets out of the car before he can reply. He’s grabbing his things from the backseat and you’re ready to start screaming at him for being so vague when you just want to verify that there’s not inherently wrong here—and that he’s not getting into your emails. “Hey!” 

He leans back into the passenger door with his expression so smug you want to shove your hand in his face. “Allen  _ Walker _ , do you believe in reincarnation?” 

Something hits your brain like a brick and you sputter for a moment—a moment too long, because he’s already moved back and shut the door. You watch him walk away and your heart beats just a bit faster in your chest. Of course you believe in reincarnation, because you’ve been walking around with memories that most people would tell you are made up. You know they’re not. They can’t be with how many people around you fall so completely into the recollections. Allen Walker isn’t a twenty-four year old transfer student in America living in the year of 1997. Allen Walker was a 30-something year old man living in England with his life partner in the early 1900s. None of the people you’ve told these things to believe you, but your father just walked away leaving you with the vaguest sense of understanding you’ve ever gotten out of him. 

For this reason, you’re both nervous and excited for this hook-up later. After spending way too many hours online looking for anyone who even remotely matched your description, you’d finally found someone. Everyone around you really thinks these dating sites are getting to your head or that you must be showing some kind of desperation, but that’s not the case at all. You just know who you’re looking for. 

You drive in silence to your next location in town, to meet up with the two friends who said they would wait for you this morning. Lavi was insistent on being there when this person shows up in case their intent isn’t as innocent as emails seem. You really can’t see this person being out to get you. If anything, they sound as longing as you probably do in your responses. You’ve not told this person about the reasons why you’re interested, just that you really wanted to meet them.

You will know if they’re the one the moment you see them. Your heart aches for it to be them. You will just keep looking until you find them—that could be never, you realize, but you don’t care. There’s no one else out there for you. 

A sigh escapes as you roll up to the street where you’re meeting your friends. Just outside of a small coffee shop is where you’ll meet them—where they are seated at a table among the few that are set up on the sidewalk. The walk from your car to there is just a matter of crossing the street. Really, you need every delayed moment, because you know Lavi will never let you live down the fact that you’re about to meet up with a complete stranger just because he matched a few of the very specific details you’d listed on a website. They probably think you’re some special kind of shallow—only looking for what meets to the strange standards you’ve taken. 

Who you’re looking for is a tall male of what you assume to be Japanese descent, with long black hair and sleek, cool eyes. You can see his face in your mind—pale skin stretched over an angular face, strong around the jaw-line and yet curved around the cheekbone. His eyes have a slant to the edges, framed by dark lashes and the hair spills into his fair face. The long straight nose fits into his face in an elegant way that you don’t think you could just fabricate in your mind. This image of this man is too clear. 

You’ve come across many who would have fit a vague mental image, but none of them could fill the place where he belongs. It’s to the point where it aches in your chest when you think about the fact that you don’t know where this man is, or if he can even be found.

Many times you hang over the painful considerations that he could already be dead. In this particular life [and you know you’re not crazy, thinking about lives like you’ve had many—you know you have], he could have been hit by a car and killed before he was old enough to even be in your line of sight for interests. Though, you’ve been obsessing about this person since as long as you can remember. 

A sigh escapes and you finally bring yourself to getting out of your car. You know that you’re early, but this gives you plenty of time to try and talk your friends into not thinking you’re a nut-job. Patiently—even though your blood is thumping in anticipation—you wait to cross the street, finally jogging across at the first opening you get. 

Lenalee is the one who sees you first. She waves at you and you give a sheepish smile and find your way to their table. Her soft eyes calm the churning in your stomach a bit and you honestly think you’re taking this too much to heart. They’re not going to think you’re a completely hopeless buffoon for this. You just have anxiety all around and the opinions of your friends matter to you a bit. However, Lenalee always knows how to quell that discomfort. There’s something really personal and soothing in the way she addresses you. Your step is less hesitant and you have less trouble pulling yourself into the chair just across from her. 

It’s then that you see Lavi. He hasn’t noticed you because he’s got his nose down in the hand-held game that he’s jamming his thumbs on and swearing under his breath. You have no intention of disturbing him, so you just turn your attention on Lenalee. “Good morning.” 

“Good morning, Allen. How’d you sleep?” 

“Terribly,” you admit and she knows. She knows how you’ve been a walking clusterfuck—for lack of better words—since you’ve decided to meet this person. You were surprised enough they’d agreed to it after such a short discussion. You suppose that’s in the best interest, because if they’re not who you’re looking for, then you’re going to move on anyway. Dragging things out wouldn’t do well.

“I ordered a warm drink for you, I know it’s a bit cool outside.” 

“Yeah, I’m freezin’ my ass off, man,” Lavi finally slips himself into the discussion, looking up from his game to give you a lazy glare. He’s not even good at pretending to be annoyed, because you know he’s been too distracted with the game to really notice the temperature. “I hope this girl of yours shows up.” 

“Uh…” You blanch, forgetting that you haven’t really explained much to Lavi in regards to who you’re meeting up with. There are certain things you’ve skirted around with him that you’ve spoken with Lenalee about; but he’s still in the dark. You suppose that’s not shocking, given what you remember from the hazy memories of the past life before this one. “Lavi, I’m not meeting up with a girl…” 

You hadn’t planned to be so forward about it, but you know that Lavi’s not the type to let your preferences deter him from being your friend—he’s just not that kind of person. You know he’ll make a face at you—and he does—and he’ll be a bit creeped out by it, but he’ll stick with you no matter what. Still, that little pinch of discomfort sticks in your side while he digests this information. He’s known you for a while, but you’re more or less his friend via your friendship with Lenalee. You’ve become close enough friends, but nowhere near what you have with his girlfriend. He’s fortunately not the jealous type—never really was—and understands that sometimes a guy and a girl can be best friends. 

“You’re meeting up with a dude?” 

He says it slowly and you can almost see the light bulb coming on in his head. You know what he’s thinking. You can practically see the sudden burst of realization on his face. Yes, you’re the gay friend. It makes sense. “Yes, Lavi. I’m meeting up with a guy.” 

“You’ve been looking for a guy this whole time?” He’s eying you a bit and you shift, feeling a little hot under the collar. You can’t exactly say you’re gay, because you’re looking for a single person. So how do you simplify this? 

“I’m looking for a certain person…That’s all. That person, I know, is a guy and that’s the only reason, really.” You’re not trying to make excuses, but it really does come off that way. You just don’t find anyone else in your tastes or even attractive to you. As long as you have this man in your mind—and lodged in your heart—you know that you’ll never see anyone else anyway. 

“This the one from your dreams?” 

“Past life,” you snap—puffing your cheek at him like it’s not the hundredth time you’ve explained to him that you are not dreaming of these things. 

“Yeah, yeah, say whatever, man,” he looks back down to his game and makes a face, “damn it, you made me die.” 

“You deserved it,” you grunt and fold your arms in front of you. 

“So, tell me about this guy, where’s he from? How old is he?” Lavi’s being nosy now and you have half a mind to turn your nose up to him and keep the information to yourself. However, you know he means well; he’s just concerned about your strange obsession with finding one person out of millions of potential candidates. Thinking about it like that really deflates you a bit. You may never find him, but you need to try. 

“He’s an exchange student who lived in France with his father before. He’s new to the area, but the description he gave was just what I’ve been looking for. Japanese descent, taller than me by just a little, long black hair…and other specifics. He’s just out of high school. He’s eighteen.” 

Lavi looks up again and you almost shrink back because you know what’s coming next. “Eighteen? Dude, are you taking after your old man? He’s six years younger than you!” 

“He’s  _ legal _ , what does it matter?” 

“This is crazy, bro. When are you gonna throw in the towel and start looking for someone else? Someone attainable, maybe.” 

“I’m not throwing in the towel. There’s no one else that can fill the void, damn it.” 

“Okay, you two, calm down. No need to get riled up before this guy gets here,” Lenalee’s voice of reason smoothes the ruffled feathers of both of you. You know Lavi means well—but he also thinks you’re a bit loony. It might be crazy to pine after someone you’ve never really met before—and maybe you really are just having crazy hallucinations of the past. You don’t care, though. If you don’t try, you’ll never know. 

The silence that crawls over the table is uncomfortable at first, but it slowly melts into something less discomfiting. The three of you simply coexist at the table while your drinks are delivered. You feel anxious. There’s something about this—this particular wait—that’s killing you slowly. You really feel something this time and it’s got you sitting on the edge of your seat, shaking your leg like you’ve got a nervous tick. 

Peaceful silence is shattered by the loud beeping that comes from your pocket. It’s startling at first—and you’re already on edge—so you fumble to excavate the device from the chasm of keys and loose change. Holding the small device in your hands, you stare at the numbers on the screen. The little card sized gizmo is beeping still and lit up from the incoming call. 

At this moment, you turn your head back up—looking out over where you’re sitting. You feel the strangest sense of déjà vu. You can swear on your life you’ve felt this before. Looking at this beeper in your hand, in this place, feels familiar and yet you’ve never really experienced this moment before. You’ve never had a real reason to use this thing. The only reason you even have it now is to alert you when he’s going to arrive. The sound of the device is your fair warning that your date is close enough to show up at any minute. You gave him this number just in case either of you was running late. He was supposed to ring your beeper when he was close. 

That knots your stomach and you feel like you can’t drink the liquid in the cup before you. You’re too nervous and too ill from anticipation. You almost feel like you could throw up. This isn’t a feeling you remember having too often and it’s making you feel so crazy and out of control. Something is fitting into place somewhere—somehow. This feels so right it’s making your head spin. 

“Allen?” She brings you back down to Earth with the soft spoken nature of her voice and you turn your eyes on Lenalee—shaking your head like your throat’s closed up. She can see just now unsettled you are right now. “Is that him?” 

You just nod your head, because talking feels like effort. You really need to calm your nerves. This isn’t a usual reaction and you don’t really know what’s different this time. You’ve gone through this a few times—where you thought you had him, but didn’t. Your father’s strange comments and your own feelings—and sense of recollections—have made you feel like today is a fated day or something. Once upon a time, in a life you don’t live anymore, you didn’t believe in fate. Right now, however, you do. In this life, you know you’re just biding your time. Everything else seems to fall into place—Lavi and Lenalee, for example. 

Now it’s your turn. 

With the sound of your beeper, you know he’ll be here any moment. Again, a knot forms in your gut and you turn the device off and shove it back into your pocket. The image in your mind is what you’re looking for, but you’re trying so hard not to be obvious about your wandering eyes. You don’t know what direction he’ll come from, yet you also don’t want to look like a crazy person. You already feel crazy enough as it is, especially given that you’re meeting this person at eight in the morning. Who meets up in the morning? 

Well, if you remember this person—and they’re anything like they once were—then you know he’s an early riser. He agreed to this after all. In fact, it was he who suggested this place—this outside café on the main street. 

Still, you worry and wonder if you’re really as crazy as you feel. You know you’re not just fabricating this. You’ve never been delusional and you’ve rationally pieced an entire timeline that falls historically accurate. All the way down to the beginning of the 1900s when you and your lover departed. You remember the details so well—and you want to believe your father knows something of the strange memories you have. Why else…why else would he name you Allen  _ Walker _ ? He must have known to look at you and see the bleached hair and the discolored arm of yours. He must know. 

You’re not crazy. You just… L—

“Excuse me.” 

You nearly jump out of your skin when you feel the hand on your shoulder. You catch a chill and suck in a breath like you’ve run a marathon. It’s embarrassing because you know the light chortles are Lavi and Lenalee is smiling at you like you’ve done something silly. Your thought processes have dragged you away from the present and the person you’ve been searching out so readily has snuck up on you. 

Turning your head, you immediately catch sight of black. Drifting with the breeze, your eyes follow the silky strands of hair until they lead back to a pair of somber navy eyes. To most others, his eyes are black—but you can see the faint color from the way the light plays on his eyes. He holds his face just the way you remember, with his chin up a bit to leave his neck exposed—but not unguarded. It’s a confident way he stands—stepping back so you can turn in your seat and come to your feet clumsily. 

When you compose yourself, you really get a look at him and your heart leaps—burning in your chest until you’re holding your chest through the fabric of your shirt. 

“Are you Allen?” He asks, quirking a brow at you just like he used to do. The light pours on him in just the right way to really frame his face and you know. There’s no mistaking every detail that you’ve painstakingly recalled over the last few years. You’ve imagined him over and over until you’re staring right at the pictures you’ve created in your mind. This…is him. “I can’t imagine many other people with stark white hair, but if I’ve got the wrong person…” 

The excitement pools in your chest and drops in the form of hard, compacted realization. You remember—and perhaps your father does—but he…doesn’t? 

For a moment, you’re filled with the most uncomfortably suffocating feeling and you almost want to turn away to throw up into the nearest shrubbery. This wasn’t a thing you’d deeply considered. Yes, you’ve toyed with the idea that he wouldn’t remember you, but you’ve never exactly toyed with the feelings you might actually have if faced with it. This means that he could decide he hates you and have nothing to do with you. This could mean you’ll have to fight to make him love you all over again.

This essentially would mean that the person before you is just a reincarnation of him and not really  _ him _ . Not your Kanda, but this life’s variation. 

That makes you undeniably upset and before you can say a word to this man, you’re wiping the fog out of your eyes. You haven’t even spoken a word to him and you’re crying. At this moment, you feel like it would be better if you crawled up under a rock and laid there for the rest of your life. Then you could pretend that the person you’ve spent your whole life searching hadn’t really left you for blissful oblivion. Was this what Kanda had feared when he was fading in your arms? A future where he lost what he had then? Because it hurts. 

It hurts so much that you have to sit back down and put your head down. “I’m sorry,” you reply, muffled by the way your body is bent forward. You’d put your head between your knees and cry if you thought it wouldn’t make you look like you’re a lunatic. For the moment, you just quietly sit there, trying to unclusterfuck your thoughts. He must already think he’s found a nutcase—especially if this is Kanda. 

Kanda. 

Your heart and soul belongs to that person and here he is—standing before you in a life neither of you have lived. What do you even say? “I’m sorry…I…” You freeze up again, glancing up at him again. 

You instantly regret it, because the look on his face is like a vice on your heart, squeezing until you can feel the veins and arteries popping out and leaving you to bleed into the open cavity of your chest. You’re having a partial mental collapse and your friends are stunned. This man before you is silent. All you can even think to say is overwritten by apologies and the steady sinking of that initial bubble of happiness at this journey’s end. 

The only thing left of everything you knew are the wisps of familiarity. Traces of recognizable things all around you and you suddenly wish you were oblivious. “I’m sorry,” you cry, giving up. You feel like you’ve been punched and you’re too sore to fight back. “I look crazy…hah…” You mutter on, losing the will to care if you end up being talked into counseling later. “I’m sorry, I…I’ve been looking for someone…It’s crazy yeah? But I swear,” you say, turning your expression directly to his, “you look just like him. A dead ringer. I could have painted you if I wasn’t an awful painter.” 

Your head goes back down and you bite your tongue. It would be wrong to hold him here if this is the reality, yet, you want to keep him to you as much as you can. There’s no one else that can fill the void that these memories have created. 

A pair of shoes fills your vision as you look down and you blink. He’s moved closer to you and you feel that coil of nerves snapping along your body—making you tremble a bit. You feel like a fool, but you can’t help it. This wasn’t something you planned for. How could you have known how you’d feel if you ever met him? Somewhere along the lines you think you’ve convinced yourself that you never would. 

And yet…

“Beansprout…” 

The muscles in your neck tighten and you snap your head, craning your neck back. You don’t care if this motion almost hurts you. You don’t care about anything. Nothing except this person. This person who has been the only one to call you this since you had woken up to this modern world. This person, who had created that annoying nickname for you. The bubbling desire to scream at all the conflicting feelings is being suppressed, but barely. Your assumptions and fears are being slapped down by the single word he’s spoken to you so softly. 

“I…” You breathe dryly. “Do you…” 

The back of his hand turns against your cheek and his knuckles graze across your chin. “Yeah,” he whispers—a soothing sound that settles trembles in your elbows and shakes the tears right out of you again. You don’t try to stop yourself from sitting straighter and moving to the edge of the chair until you can get your arms around him and pull him into an embrace—burying your face into his abdomen and crying like you’ve just found the other half of your soul. 

“I missed you,” you sob, knowing that there won’t be another word of clarification. You and Kanda never needed it before. 

He leans over you and wraps his arms as best around your shoulders as this awkward embrace will allow. You know this is his way of telling you he missed you the same. He’s never been expressive and you like him just fine like that. You want him just like that. Your partner. 

“What’s going on?” You hear Lenalee’s voice in between your heavy breathing—a fight to keep yourself from suffocating on your excitement. 

“…The internet. That’s what just happened. I told you, the internet is a path towards insanity.” 

You can feel the vibration of chuckles against your face and he’s slipped to his knees. You’re not exactly sure what’s going to happen after this moment, but you know you’re going to be holding him for a long time. And you really don’t care who thinks you’re crazy. 

The idea sinks in that he actively sought you out as well. Neither of you have ever stopped looking. And you’ve never stopped walking. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a single oneshot to follow this. Thank you for following thus far.


End file.
